ESR12 Project
Title of the project
Transdisciplinary Research: Adaptive Wildland Fire Risk Management in Mediterranean Social-Ecological Systems
Name
Abstract
Living with wildfires in an era of climate change requires interweaving varied forms of knowledge to adapt sustainably and justly. New approaches need to guide adaptations and transformations that encourage mutual learning, celebrate local ecological knowledge and welcome plural values in land management. This collaborative PhD research, nested within the PyroLife project, took place with the boundary-spanning wildfire knowledge exchange organization, the Pau Costa Foundation (Spain), and was supported by the Water Systems and Global Change research group at Wageningen University (Netherlands). The project is poised to work across international borders, engage deeply with local actors outside of academia, and create new knowledge across sectors. Our transdisciplinary project focuses on co-creating adaptation pathways for wildland fire risk reduction. For this, we first aimed to better understand the local social contexts of rural Mediterranean areas and how these factors influence adaptive capacity to wildland fire through qualitative methods. Then, we conducted a series of participatory workshops in the Montseny watershed of Catalonia with the purpose of elevating local knowledge and encouraging social learning in adaptation pathways processes. Finally, a literature review of transdisciplinary fire research to date outlines the challenges and opportunities for this field’s growth. Through this collaborative research, I have worked directly with fire managers, actors in local governance, sustainable farmers and foresters, and other grassroots initiatives. My PhD research was supervised by Dr. Núria Prat Guitart of the Pau Costa Foundation, Lisa Langer of Scion, and Drs. Fulco Ludwig, Carolien Kroeze and Cathelijne Stoof of Wageningen University.
Copyright
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