Susan Charnley

• PhD
• Researcher at US Forest Service

Community forests (CFs) involve communities in decision-making about, management of and access to forests, and have potential to benefit both communities and forests. However, they lack a single definition, clear distinction from related topics, or method for identification. This perspectives article explores historical and current literature on CF...

Research on community forests (CFs), primarily governed and managed by local forest users in the United States, is limited, despite their growth in numbers over the past decade. We conducted a survey to inventory CFs in the United States and better understand their ownership and governance structures, management objectives, benefits, and financing....

The USDA Forest Service received $5.447 billion in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, providing substantial funding to support implementation of the agency’s 2022 Wildfire Crisis Strategy between fiscal years 2022 and 2026. This article examines how the agency might enhance local job creation and equity while conducting wildfir...

Community forests managed by indigenous, traditional, and local communities must be environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable for their benefits to persist. Certification of community forests communicates that products harvested there meet these standards. However, certification of community forests has been limited, particularly in A...

In Africa, forest tenure reform to decentralize forest management from central governments to local communities has been occurring since the 1990s to promote forest conservation, poverty alleviation, and sustainable forest-based livelihoods. African governments and donor organizations continue to invest in community forestry, raising the question o...

For over two decades, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for community forestry has occurred in tropical countries. However, community forests represent just over 1% of the total FSC-certified forest area worldwide. Certification can promote more socially and environmentally responsible forest management while delivering economic return...

Community forests have been established in many parts of the United States (Baker & Kusel, 2003; McCullough, 1995). They span a broad range of ownership models, tenure regimes, governance approaches, aims, and activities and have evolved over time within local and larger-scale social-ecological contexts and conditions (Christoffersen et al., 2008;...

Wildfire is an influential driver of social and ecological change that calls for adaptive governance on federal lands. We identify supporting and limiting elements of adaptive governance in the context of wildfire management on the Deschutes National Forest (DNF). We use key findings to propose actions and leverage points to increase the US Forest...

After a century of intensive logging, federal forest management policies were developed in the 1990s to protect remaining large trees and old forests in the western US. Today, due to rapidly changing ecological conditions, new threats and uncertainties, and scientific advancements, some policy provisions are being re‐evaluated in interior Oregon an...

Community-based forest management has become increasingly widespread in Africa since the 1990s as an approach to conserving local forests while contributing social and economic benefits to local communities. Community forests (CFs) can sell forest goods and services to generate revenue for community benefit. Increased understanding of whether and h...

Beaver-related restoration is a process-based strategy that seeks to address wide-ranging ecological objectives by reestablishing dam building in degraded stream systems. Although the beaver-related restoration has broad appeal, especially in water-limited systems, its effectiveness is not yet well documented. In this article, we present a process-...

In 1994, a large-tree harvest standard known as the “21-inch rule” was applied to land and resource management plans of national forests in eastern Oregon and Washington (hereafter, the “east side”) to halt the loss of large, old, live, and dead trees and old forest patches. These trees and forest patches have distinct ecological, economic, and soc...

‘Managed grazing’ is gaining attention for its potential to contribute to climate change mitigation by reducing bare ground and promoting perennialization, thereby enhancing soil carbon sequestration (SCS). Understanding why ranchers adopt managed grazing is key to developing the right incentives. In this paper, we explore principles and practices...

The past decade has seen a rapid rise in beaver-related stream restoration (BRR) using beavers and beaver dams (real or artificial) as a tool. Potential benefits of this low-cost, nature-based restoration approach include restoring aquatic and riparian habitat and recovering of threatened species dependent on it, improving water availability and st...

U.S. federal government agencies play an important role in mitigating some risks posed to communities by natural hazard events, especially communities with high proportions of low-income or minority residents. Ongoing efforts of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to reduce the buildup of forest fuels on national forests, particularly in dry mixed-conif...

Large-scale, high-severity wildfires are a major challenge to the future social-ecological sustainability of fire-adapted forest ecosystems in the American West. Managing forests to mitigate this risk is a collective action problem requiring landowners and stakeholders within multi-ownership landscapes to plan and implement coordinated restoration...

An approach to community-based forestry (CBF) on federal forestlands in the western United States consists of a number of informal civil society institutions for communities to better organize internally and interact with government. We review the body of research on this topic, which has an explicit focus on the three interlinked aspects of democr...

In order to increase the pace and scale of managing forests to reduce wildfire risk in the western U.S., federal agencies have adopted policies that promote an all lands management (ALM) approach, which extends management actions across jurisdictional boundaries. To better implement such policies, ALM approaches require new governance systems that...

We examined traditional knowledge of fire use by the Ichishikin (Sahaptin), Kitsht Wasco (Wasco), and Numu (Northern Paiute) peoples (now Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, CTWS) in the eastside Cascades of Oregon to generate insights for restoring conifer forest landscapes and enhancing culturally-valued resources. We examined qualitative and ge...

The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) has guided the management of 17 federal forests in the US Pacific Northwest for the past 25 years. The existing management plans for these national forests – which were amended by the NWFP – are now being evaluated for revision under the US Forest Service's 2012 planning rule. To help inform federal land managers, w...

The fundamental assumption of the NWFP was that the breadth of the biological and socioeconomic strategies would achieve its biodiversity conservation and socioeconomic goals, and that those goals were also compatible with each other. Scientists and managers now have the perspective afforded by 23 years of research, monitoring, and field experience...

This article uses research about non-timber forest products (NTFP) gathering in Seattle, Washington, USA to examine how people gain access to natural resources in urban environments. Our analysis focuses on gathering in three spaces: parks, yards, and public rights of way. We present a framework for conceptualizing access, and highlight cognitive m...

Poor condition of many streams and concerns about future droughts in the arid and semi-arid western USA have motivated novel restoration strategies aimed at accelerating recovery and increasing water resources. Translocation of beavers into formerly occupied habitats, restoration activities encouraging beaver recolonization, and instream structures...

Natural resource managers of federal lands in the USA are often tasked with various forms of social and economic impact analysis. Federal agencies in the USA also have a mandate to analyze the potential environmental justice consequences of their activities. Relatively little is known about the environmental justice impacts of natural resource mana...

Introduction: Interrelated social and ecological challenges demand an understanding of how environmental change and management decisions affect human well-being. This paper outlines a framework for measuring human well-being for ecosystem-based management (EBM). We present a prototype that can be adapted and developed for various scales and context...

We examine the influence of wildfire institutions on management and forest resilience over time, drawing on research from a multiownership, frequent-fire, coupled human and natural system (CHANS) in the eastern Cascades of Oregon, USA. We constructed social-ecological histories of the study area’s three main landowner groups (national forest, priva...

Coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) research highlights reciprocal interactions (or feedbacks) between biophysical and socioeconomic variables to explain system dynamics and resilience. Empirical models often are used to test hypotheses and apply theory that represent human behavior. Parameterizing reciprocal interactions presents two challen...

Increasing recognition of the human dimensions of natural resource management issues, and of social and ecological sustainability and resilience as being inter-related, highlights the importance of applying social science to natural resource management decision-making. Moreover, a number of laws and regulations require natural resource management a...

This study investigates how federal, state, and private corporate forest owners in a fire-prone landscape of southcentral Oregon manage their forests to reduce wildfire hazard and loss to high-severity wildfire. We evaluate the implications of our findings for concepts of social-ecological resilience. Using interview data, we found a high degree of...

Fire-prone landscapes present many challenges for both managers and policy makers in developing adaptive behaviors and institutions. We used a coupled human and natural systems framework and an agent-based landscape model to examine how alternative management scenarios affect fire and ecosystem services metrics in a fire-prone multiownership landsc...

Since 2009, the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service has promoted an "all lands approach" to forest restoration, particularly relevant in the context of managing wildfire. To characterize its implementation, we undertook an inventory of what we refer to as fire-focused all lands management (ALM) projects, defined as projects in which fuels r...

Wildfire risk in temperate forests has become a nearly intractable problem that can be characterized as a socioecological "pathology": that is, a set of complex and problematic interactions among social and ecological systems across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Assessments of wildfire risk could benefit from recognizing and accounting for...

Sustainable working landscapes are critical to the conservation of biodiversity in the American West and its cultures of rural ranching and forestry. Given the West's patchwork of public, private, and tribal lands, perhaps the best way to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem function on a large scale is through a process of collaborative conservatio...

Social indicators, both mature and emerging, are underused

Management of ecological conditions and processes in multiownership landscapes requires cooperation by diverse stakeholder groups. The structure of organizational networks – the extent to which networks allow for interaction among organizations within and across ideological and geographic boundaries – can indicate potential opportunities for cooper...

Disasters result from hazards affecting vulnerable people. Most disasters research by anthropologists focuses on vulnerability; this article focuses on natural hazards. We use the case of wildfire mitigation on United States Forest Service lands in the northwestern United States to examine social, political, and economic variables at multiple scale...

The Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic that has stricken thousands of people in the three West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea highlights the lack of adaptive capacity in post-conflict countries. The scarcity of health services in particular renders these populations vulnerable to multiple interacting stressors including food...

An emerging approach for restoring natural ecosystems is payment for ecosystem services (PES). Two primary means for compensation are embedding the costs of maintaining the services in the price of food and fiber products, and offering financial incentives and rewards to ranchers, farmers, or foresters working to protect, enhance, or restore ecosys...

This chapter explores the ways in which national forest managers may contribute to community well-being by designing projects that accomplish forest management in ways that not only meet their ecological goals, but also create economic opportunities for nearby communities. The chapter summarizes a number of strategies for enhancing the economic ben...

National forest management efforts have generally moved toward collaborative and participatory approaches at a variety of scales. This includes, at a larger scale, greater public participation in transparent and inclusive democratic processes and, at a smaller scale, more engagement with local communities. Participatory approaches are especially im...

Forest products harvesting and use from national forest lands remain important to local residents and communities in some parts of the Sierra Nevada science synthesis area. Managing national forests for the sustainable production of timber, biomass, nontimber forest products, and forage for livestock can help support forestbased livelihoods in part...

Previous chapters of this synthesis rely on multiple ecological disciplines to frame core aspects of a sustainable, resilient ecosystem. Approaching forest management in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Range in a manner that promotes socioecological resilience and sustains important forest values requires consideration of not only the ecolog...

National forests in the Sierra Nevada and Southern Cascade bioregions have begun to review and revise their land and resource management plans (LRMPs). The three most southern national forests of the Sierra Nevada (Inyo, Sequoia, and Sierra) were selected to be the lead forests for the Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region (Region 5) and are amon...

Wildfires, especially large, severe, and unmanageable events, exert major influences on socioecological systems, not only through risks to life and property, but also losses of important values associated with mature forest stands. These events prompt decisions about post-wildfire management interventions, including short-term emergency responses,...

Experimental Forests and Ranges (EFRs) in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service historically have served as a resource for scientists conducting longitudinal and comparative research on aspects of forestry and range management. In addition to being sites of scientific investigation, EFRs are widely used by people for act...

This paper examines micro-processes of institutionalization, using the case of stewardship contracting within the US Forest Service. Our basic premise is that, until a new policy becomes an everyday practice among local actors, it will not become institutionalized at the macro-scale. We find that micro-processes of institutionalization are driven b...

Land managers in the Pacific Northwest have reported a need for updated scientific information on the ecology and management of mixed-conifer forests east of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington. Of particular concern are the moist mixed-conifer forests, which have become drought-stressed and vulnerable to high-severity fire after decades of...

Policymakers seek ways to encourage fuel reduction among private forest landowners to augment similar efforts on federal and state lands. Motivating landowners to contribute to landscape-level wildfire protection requires an understanding of factors that underlie landowner behaviour regarding wildfire. We developed a conceptual framework describing...

This chapter sets the context for the following sociocultural sections of the synthesis by providing information on the broader social, cultural, and economic patterns in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Range. Demographic influences surrounding population change, including those accounted for through amenity migration, are examined. Social a...

The US Department of Agriculture Forest Service's focus on hazardous fuels reduction has increased since the adoption of the National Fire Plan in 2001. However, appropriations for hazardous fuels reduction still lag behind wildfire suppression spending. Offsetting fuels treatment costs through biomass utilization or by using innovative administrat...

For a century, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service experimental forests and ranges (EFRs) have served as a resource for scientists conducting long-term research relating to forestry and range management and ecosystem science. Social science research has not comprised a significant portion of the research endeavor at EFRs to date, despite th...

The fire-prone landscapes of the West include both public and private lands. Wildfire burns indiscriminately across property boundaries, which means that the way potential fuels are managed on one piece of property can affect wildfire risk on neighboring lands. Paige Fischer and Susan Charnley, social scientists with the Pacific Northwest Research...

We investigated nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) owners' invasive plant risk perceptions and mitigation practices using statistical analysis of mail survey data and qualitative analysis of interview data collected in Oregon's ponderosa pine zone. We found that 52% of the survey sample was aware of invasive plant species considered problematic by...

Managing natural processes at the landscape scale to promote forest health is important, especially in the case of wildfire, where the ability of a landowner to protect his or her individual parcel is constrained by conditions on neighboring ownerships. However, management at a landscape scale is also challenging because it requires cooperation on...

The past decade has seen resurgence in interest in gathering wild plants and fungi in cities. In addition to gathering by individuals, dozens of groups have emerged in U.S., Canadian, and European cities to facilitate access to nontimber forest products (NTFPs), particularly fruits and nuts, in public and private spaces. Recent efforts within citie...

Unsustainable rangeland management and land conversion are significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Regardless of the mechanism for exchange, carbon credits generally are associated with some type of standard or protocol that verifies the amount of carbon sequestered by a given project. The protocol used Land Resource Reg...

The Trigg Ranch comprises 52,000 acres of rugged rangeland in the mesa country of northeastern New Mexico approximately 30 miles northwest of Tucumcari in the Western Great Plains and Central Great Plains Land Resource Regions. The ranch is set up as a trust and overseen by the entire Trigg clan, comprising seven different families - all grandchild...

For a century, US Forest Service experimental forests and ranges (EFRs) have been a resource for scientists conducting long-term research relating to forestry and range management. Social science research has been limited, despite the history of occupation and current use of these sites for activities ranging from resource extraction and recreation...

California's north coast region is heavily forested, mountainous, and contains many rural communities where natural-resource-based jobs-particularly in forestry-have long been important. The economic recession that started in 2007 added to what many interviewees perceived as having been depressed economic conditions in the area's rural communities...

Forest management for carbon sequestration is a low-cost, low-technology, relatively easy way to help mitigate global climate change that can be adopted now while additional long-term solutions are developed. Carbon-oriented management of forests also offers forest owners an opportunity to obtain a new source of income, and commonly has environment...

ABSTRACT  In this article, we call for enhanced quantitative and environmental analysis in the work of environmental anthropologists who wish to influence policy. Using a database of 77 leading monographs published between 1967 and 2006, 147 articles by the same authors, and a separate sample of 137 articles from the journal Human Organization, we...

Nonindustrial private—or "family"—forests hold great potential for sequestering carbon and have received much attention in discussions about forestry-based climate change mitigation. However, little is known about social and cultural influences on owners' willingness to manage for carbon and respond to policies designed to encourage carbon-oriented...

The Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is dedicated to the principle of multiple use management of the Nation's forest resources for sustained yields of wood, water, forage, wildlife, and recreation. Through forestry research, cooperation with the States and private forest owners, and management of the national forests and nationa...

There are opportunities for forest owners and ranchers to participate in emerging carbon markets and contribute to climate change mitigation through carbonoriented forest and range management activities. These activities often promote sustainable forestry and ranching and broader conservation goals while having the potential to provide a new income...

This study uses a multiscale, multimethods approach to examine the effects of declining timber harvests on the well-being of forest communities in the Pacific Northwest as a result of the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan). We found that the effects of declining timber harvests were variable and depended on the importance of the timber sector in a co...

This paper examines the relation between public land management policy, amenity migration, and socioeconomic well-being using the case of the Northwest Forest Plan—a forest management policy that caused 11.6 million acres of federal land in the US Pacific Northwest to be reallocated from commodity production to biodiversity services. Our analysis f...

Implementation of ecosystem management projects has created a demand for socioeconomic assessments to predict or evaluate the impacts of ecosystem policies. Social scientists for these assessments face challenges that, while not unique to such projects, are more likely to arise than in smaller scale ones. This article summarizes lessons from our ex...

This report, examines socioeconoinic changes that took place between 1990 and 2003 on and around lands managed by the Klamatli National Forest in California to assess the effects of the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) on rural economies and communities there. Three case communities were studied: Scott Valley, Butte Valley, and Mid-Klamalh. The rep...

This report examines socioeconomic changes that occurred between 1990 and 2003 associated with implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) in and around lands managed by the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington state. Our findings are based on quantitative data from the U.S. census, the USDA Forest Service and other federal d...

This paper synthesizes the existing literature about traditional and local ecological knowledge relating to biodiversity in Pacific Northwest forests in order to assess what is needed to apply this knowledge to forest biodiversity conservation efforts. We address four topics: (1) views and values people have relating to biodiversity, (2) the resour...

Community forestry refers to forest management that has ecological sustainability and local community benefits as central goals, with some degree of responsibility and authority for forest management formally vested in the community. This review provides an overview of where the field of community forestry is today. We describe four case examples f...

The potential for traditional and local ecological knowledge to contribute to biodiversity conservation has been widely recognized, but the actual application of this knowledge to biodiversity conservation is not easy. This paper synthesizes literature about traditional and local ecological knowledge and forest management in the Pacific Northwest t...

The Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is dedicated to the principle of multiple use management of the Nation's forest resources for sus-tained yields of wood, water, forage, wildlife, and recreation. Through forestry research, cooperation with the States and private forest owners, and manage-ment of the national forests and natio...

I evaluated the Northwest Forest Plan as a model for ecosystem management to achieve social and economic goals in communities located around federal forests in the US. Pacific Northwest. My assessment is based on the results of socioeconomic monitoring conducted to evaluate progress in achieving the plan's goals during its first 10 years. The asses...

The reduced timber harvesting on Coos Bay District land under the Plan was substantial, adding to the multiple forces affecting the area's wood-products industry since the early 1980s. To compensate, the district invested heavily in its recreation program to help local communities build a nature-based recreation and tourism industry on the central...

The socioeconomic monitoring program of the Pacific Northwest Interagency Regional Monitoring Program went through three phases of development between 1999 and 2005. Volume VI provides a history of the socioeconomic monitoring program, detailing each phase of its development and discussing challenges associated with socioeconomic monitoring at the...

The socioeconomic monitoring report addresses two evaluation questions posed in the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) Record of Decision and assesses progress in meeting five Plan socioeconomic goals. Volume I of the report contains key findings. Volume II addresses the question, Are predictable levels of timber and nontimber resources available and...

One of the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) socioeconomic goals was to promote interagency collaboration and agency-citizen collaboration in forest management. This volume focuses on agency-citizen collaboration under the Plan. Two formal institutions were set up to promote agency-citizen collaboration in forest management: provincial advisory comm...

One of the Northwest Forest Plan's socioeconomic goals was to protect the forest values and environmental qualities associated with late-successional, old-growth, and aquatic ecosystems. In Volume V we address the topic of forest protection from the socioeconomic perspective. A literature review revealed that between 1990 and 2002 there has been su...

One of the evaluation questions posed in the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) record of decision (ROD) concerns use levels of natural resources: Are predictable levels of timber and nontimber resources available and being produced? To answer this question, Volume II of the socioeconomic monitoring report analyzes trends in Forest Service (FS) and B...