Working Together to Restore:
Communities In Action
Living in the West often means learning to live with wildfire. Many communities and land managers recognize the threat of wildfire to homes, lives, and forests, and have been actively working together to develop community wildfire protection plans, restore forested areas in the wildland-urban interface, protect watersheds, and promote Firewise principles for homeowners.
Communities like Flagstaff, Arizona and collaborative organizations like the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI), Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership (GFFP), and the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project (FWPP) are leaders in innovative restoration opportunities and partnerships as well as local outreach and education.
To learn more about these partnerships and initiatives, or how to better protect your community from wildfire, visit these websites:
The Economic and Social Benefits of Restoration
Healthy forests provide a myriad of economic and social benefits. Forests offer ecosystem services like clean water, carbon storage, flood and erosion control, and recreation opportunities, and throughout much of the West they often support vital tourist economies. Restorative mechanical thinning treatments make economic and ecological sense because they promote economic development in local economies while reducing wildfire risk and restoring ecosystem health.
To better understand the economic trade-offs of restoration, the ERI has worked closely with Northern Arizona University-affiliated and independent economists on full-cost accounting and cost avoidance studies that examine the direct, indirect, and hidden costs of severe wildfires. In addition to economic analyses, ERI studies social impacts of wildfire.
Below are several of our most recent white papers that explore the social and economic implications of wildfire and restoration:
- WHITE PAPER: Assessment of Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP) in Arizona and Throughout the West (2020)
- WHITE PAPER: Wildfire Trends Across the Western US: Forest Fires Have Increased in Size, Severity, and Frequency Across Western Forests (2020)
- WHITE PAPER: Administrative and Legal Review Opportunities for Collaborative Groups (2015)
- WHITE PAPER: Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project: Creating Solutions through Community Partnerships(2015)
- WHITE PAPER: A Full Cost Accounting of the 2010 Schultz Fire (2013)
- WHITE PAPER: The Efficacy of Hazardous Fuel Treatments: A Rapid Assessment of the Economic and Ecologic Consequences of Alternative Hazardous Fuel Treatments (2013)
- WHITE PAPER: Forest Restoration Treatments: Their Effect on Wildland Fire Suppression Costs (2013)
- WHITE PAPER: Workforce Needs of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative Project: An Analysis (2012)
- WHITE PAPER: Ecological Restoration as Regional Economic Stimulus (2010)
Partnerships
The ERI maintains a national profile of excellence in the field of forest restoration and fire through scholarly activities, media, testimony, and participation at national meetings and other venues. Through this engagement, ERI has established more than 200 partnerships with governments, organization, and others in Arizona, the West, and across the nation.
Working Paper: Opportunities for Application of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Restoration of Pinyon-Juniper Ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau
Despite being substantially altered by climate change and human activities, the culturally and ecologically vital pinyon-juniper ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau can be successfully restored through management actions that both recover ecological function and actively engage local Indigenous and traditional communities.
FireBox and CharBoss: An Alternative to Open Burning of Woody Biomass
The traditional practice of openly burning woody biomass (a common byproduct of southwestern US forest restoration) degrades soil and compromises air quality, driving researchers to evaluate alternative air curtain burners like the FireBox and CharBoss® for their efficiency in cleanly disposing of biomass and producing soil-restoring biochar.
Positive drought feedbacks increase tree mortality risk in dry woodlands of the US Southwest
Recurrent droughts in the US Southwest have severely compromised the natural resilience of pinyon–juniper woodlands, triggering widespread mortality and crown dieback between 1998 and 2023 that ultimately heightened the future mortality risk of surviving trees by 28.2%.