Adapting wildfire risk assessment for a Tribal landscape: Mount Baldy and the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona

Context

The White Mountain Apache Tribe of the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona manages their natural and cultural resources within a perpetually wildfire-risky environment. The Tribe’s values also extend beyond those of typical risk assessments to include the importance of cultural activities and sites, various recreational and revenue values, and culturally significant species.

Objectives

We worked with the Tribe to characterize a sample of these values and adapt them for use in a widely used risk assessment framework as part of an ongoing effort to improve wildfire mitigation and management with Tribes.

Methods

We used a three-factor experimental design to conduct a sensitivity analysis related to the treatment of values included in the risk assessment. It focused on (1) the inclusion of relative importance or not, (2) the inclusion of relative extent or not, and (3) absolute versus scaled net value change for each value.

Results

Our results demonstrate a pattern of risk related to the values expressed by the Tribe with a focus on the Mount Baldy landscape, but the contributions of individual values to an aggregate measure of risk vary.

Conclusions

Our assessments demonstrate an opportunity to incorporate Tribal values. Different depictions of risk can be used to accommodate diverse perspectives of decision-makers or managers, the values they are considering, and whether or not they are approaching risk in an emergency response or preparedness frame.