Kathleen Uyttewaal

Home Early Stage Researchers Kathleen Uyttewaal

Kathleen talks about her research, experience as part of PyroLife ITN and future plans.

About Kathleen Uyttewaal, ESR12
Hello!

I am a PhD candidate at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, primarily hosted at the Pau Costa Foundation in Spain.

Raised in California and France, I have also studied and worked in Chile and Spain in sustainable rural development. I believe that mending our global relationship with wildland fire relies on working with rural communities who have maintained these unique, biodiverse Mediterranean landscapes and cultures.

For this, my research in the PyroLife project is transdisciplinary: it is embedded and interacts with wider systems of knowledge beyond academia to address complex issues and encourage transformative change.

Click here to get to know Kathleen.

Affiliation
Pau Costa Foundation and Wageningen Univeristy & Research, with a secondment at Scion (New Zealand Forest Research Institute).
Research focus
Rural Mediterranean communities and ecosystems face many overlapping challenges. Pressures like depopulation and climate change exacerbate already vulnerable and rapidly changing landscapes. Fire, once a land management tool, has now become a threat due to larger, more frequent and uncontrollable events. This research project develops a transdisciplinary framework that encourages a suite of adaptive land management tools to support wildland fire risk reduction efforts in rural and semi-rural Mediterranean communities. This was developed through qualitative approaches in Mediterranean areas and a participatory study with diverse agents of change in the Montseny watershed: a semi-rural area of Catalonia, Spain.

More about Kathleen´s research here.

Skills and abilities
Collaboration | Communication | Group facilitation | Intercultural sensitivity | Interdisciplinary research | Qualitative research | Teaching | Transdisciplinary research | Translation
Languages
English (native), French (native), Spanish (fluent), Catalan (fluent)
Education
  • PhD, Wageningen University & Research. Thesis title: Linking past, present and future pathways to fire adaptation: a transdisciplinary approach in Mediterranean Europe.
  • MSc in Agroecology & Sustainable Rural Development, Universidad Internacional de Andalucia
  • BSc in Conservation & Resource Studies, UC Berkeley
Contact
Email: kauyttewaal@paucostafoundation.org

Alt. email: kathleen.uyttewaal@wur.nl

Social media
Research publications
Uyttewaal, K., Stoof, C.R., Canaleta, G., Cifre-Sabater M., Langer, E.R, Ludwig, F., Kroeze, C., Moran, P., Ottolini, I., Prat-Guitart, N. (2024). Uplifting local ecological knowledge as part of adaptation pathways to wildfire risk reduction: A case study in Montseny, Catalonia (Spain). Ambio.

  • See factsheet summarising the research, showing the implications on wildfire management and giving recommendations to policymakers and emergency responders, in English and Catalan.

Uyttewaal, K., Prat-Guitart, N., Ludwig, F., Kroeze, F., Langer, E.R. (Lisa). (2023). Territories in Transition: how social contexts influence wildland fire adaptive capacity in rural Northwestern European Mediterranean areas. Fire Ecology. 19, 13.

Mauri, E., Hernández Paredes, E., Núñez Blanco, I., García Feced, C. (2023). Key Recommendations on Wildfire Prevention in the Mediterranean. European Forest Institute.

Soy-Massoni, E.; Uyttewaal, K.; Prat-Guitart, N.; Varela, E. Fire Eaters: Exploring Consumer Preferences for Labeling Extensive Livestock Products Providing Wildfire Prevention Services. Land 2022, 11, 700.

Quílez R, Valbuena L, Vendrell J, Uytewaal K and Ramirez J. (2020). Establishing Propagation Nodes as a Basis for Preventing Large Wildfires: The Proposed Methodology. Front. For. Glob. Change 3:548799.

Other communication outputs
Blog posts

Indigenous fire management. Lessons and challenges for the construction of a new paradigm of fire management with an intercultural vision. PyroLife blog.

Appunti di lavoro sul campo dall’Italia: Condurre una ricerca qualitativa sulla governance degli incendi boschivi e sui contesti sociali locali per la gestione adattativa degli incendi in Toscana. PyroLife blog.

Field work notes from Italy: Conducting qualitative research on forest fire governance and local social contexts for adaptive fire management in Tuscany. PyroLife blog.

Events

Organised The impact of fire in Montseny. 2022

Lectures

Use of fire by communities in the Mediterranean region. Master Master Sciences du Vivan, École Pratique des Hautes Études, B&E Fire Course. 2022.

Going Global: Incendios Forestales, Trabajo Transdisciplinario, y conexiones con la arquitectura del paisaje. MBLandArch at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. 2022.

Conocimientos Culturales y Tradicionales de Fuego. MBLandArch at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. 2021.

Magazine articles

Territorios en transición: incendios y factores sociales en el noroeste del Mediterráneo. Revista Incendios y Riesgos Naturales.

Incidents within Incidents: social perspectives on the global pandemic and wildfire. IAWF Magazine.

Basque-ing in Fire Knowledge. IAWF Magazine.

Presentations

Co-creating Adaptation Pathways to Wildland Fire in Catalonia Theme: Stakeholder Engagement. 8th International Wildland Fire Conference. 2023.

Transdisciplinary Cross-Risk Fire Research: Adaptive Wildland Fire Risk Management in Mediterranean Social-Ecological Systems. PyroLife 2023 Conference.

Adapting to Wildland Fire: Lessons from Rural Mediterranean Social Contexts. IAWF Conference. 2022.

Co-producing Adaptation Pathways for wildland fire risk reduction. Fire Ecology Across Boundaries: Connecting Science and Management. 2022.

Adapting to wildland fire in rural Mediterranean social contexts. AFE Conference. 2021.