Operationalizing Resilience on U.S. National Forestlands: A Quantitative Analysis of Environmental Impact Statements

Abstract

Social-ecological resilience has been embraced by the United States Forest Service (USFS) as an organizing principle for forest planning and management; however, the extent and depth of its operationalization remain unclear. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of environmental impact statements, evaluating the presence or absence of various elements that indicate “resilience thinking” and “resilience speaking” and analyzing the associations between them. We found that the occurrence of most indicators of resilience thinking did not have a significant relationship with the prevalence of resilience speaking, but that some indicators of resilience thinking were present throughout a large proportion of documents. Our findings suggest that the operationalization of resilience does not depend upon high levels of resilience-related verbiage. Further efforts may be needed to bring agency actions and agency rhetoric into closer alignment to advance social-ecological resilience.

Keywords:

• U.S. Forest Service
• content analysis
• disturbance
• planning
• policy

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Joint Fire Science Program under Grant 16-3-01-10.