Colorado forests are representative of landscapes throughout the American West characterized by rapid demographic and land use change coupled with increasing risk of high-intensity wildfire. Mitigating risk of wildfire along with building more resilient landscapes fundamentally requires the engagement of diverse actors and institutions, from private landowners to local organizations to state and federal management authorities. However, disparities in risk mitigation capacity separate resilient from vulnerable communities.
The goals of this internship are to conduct fieldwork in both resilient and vulnerable communities, and contribute to a larger project investigating how social networks can help support collaborative wildfire risk mitigation. Working closely with a graduate student, the intern will collect qualitative and quantitative data from community workshops conducted across Front Range and Western Slope counties, and analyze these data to support both an independent internship project and larger project objectives.