Paige Fischer

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Paige Fischer
Born
Oregon
Alma mater Hampshire College (BA)
Oregon State University (MS, PhD)
Known forFire Science, Forest Ecology
AwardsNational Science Foundation Coupled Human and Natural Systems Fellowship (2012), USDA Forest Service Science Findings Award (2012), Influential Woman in Fire Science (2018)
Scientific career
FieldsHuman Dimensions of Climate Science
Website https://sites.google.com/umich.edu/fischerresearchgroup/research

Paige Fischer is an environmental scientist from the Pacific Northwest whose research focuses mainly on the human dimensions of environmental changes. She is especially interested in forest ecology and conservation. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability, teaching upper-level classes about analysis methods and social vulnerability to climate change.

Contents

Early life and education

Fischer grew up in Oregon and was interested in forests and their effects on humans from a young age. She received her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1994. She then spent two years at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka as a Fulbright Scholar. There, she studied the local and national policy and the cultural influences relating to and affecting forest management. She later returned to Oregon where she studied at Oregon State University. She earned her M.S. in 2003 and her Ph.D. in 2006, both in the social science of Forest Resources. While completing her PhD, she received the Ford Foundation Community Forestry Research Fellowship, allowing her to conduct research on conservation policy in Willamette Valley forests. After completing her education at Oregon State University, she received the school's Alumnus of the Year Award in 2011. She was recognized for her generous support and contributions to the College of Forestry.

Career and research

Professional experience

After completing her undergraduate degree, Fischer directed international policy programs relating to forest management for Pacific Environment. After that, she worked as a Research Social Scientist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the Forest Service. [1]

Fischer is presently an associate professor at the University of Michigan. There, she teaches classes on data collection methods and analysis, as well as a class on social adaptations to climate change. She actively researches the human dimensions of sustainability and conservation with her students. Her team, called the Fischer Research Group, aims to study human behavior in a scientific manner and is made up of postdoctoral research fellows, PhD students and master's students.

Research

Fischer's research is focused on climate change as it relates to and is affected by humans. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze interviews and surveys, she brings scientific understanding to human actions. Her work draws on ideas from the fields of social sciences and human geography along with hard sciences. She aims to understand how and why individuals and organizations are motivated to collaborate, and how cooperation can positively affect resource management and conservation policies.

The Fischer Research Group has many ongoing research projects, with funding from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the University of Michigan, the National Science Foundation, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and several private organizations. Fischer has also conducted research through previous employers, such as her work as Faculty Research Associate at Oregon State University. She currently has eight ongoing grants relating to her research projects.

Her most cited works are those that integrate scientific understanding of human behavior into studies of natural systems and conservation. For example, some of her work analyzes individual capacities to respond to hazards and changes through organization and collective management. [2] She has also written about the various sociocultural influences on conservation strategies, [3] which again combines her work studying human behaviors as well as natural resources and systems.

Notable publications

  • Charnley, Susan; Fischer, A. Paige; Jones, Eric T. (July 2007). "Integrating traditional and local ecological knowledge into forest biodiversity conservation in the Pacific Northwest". Forest Ecology and Management. 246 (1): 14–28. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2007.03.047.
  • Spies, Thomas A.; White, Eric M.; Kline, Jeffrey D.; Fischer, A. Paige; Ager, Alan; Bailey, John; Bolte, John; Koch, Jennifer; Platt, Emily; Olsen, Christine S.; Jacobs, Derric; Shindler, Bruce; Steen-Adams, Michelle M.; Hammer, Roger (2014). "Examining fire-prone forest landscapes as coupled human and natural systems". Ecology and Society. 19 (3). doi: 10.5751/ES-06584-190309 . hdl: 10535/9689 . JSTOR   26269597.
  • Fischer, A. Paige; Charnley, Susan (11 April 2012). "Risk and Cooperation: Managing Hazardous Fuel in Mixed Ownership Landscapes". Environmental Management. 49 (6): 1192–1207. Bibcode:2012EnMan..49.1192F. doi:10.1007/s00267-012-9848-z. PMC   3350635 . PMID   22525987.
  • Paveglio, Travis B.; Moseley, Cassandra; Carroll, Matthew S.; Williams, Daniel R.; Davis, Emily Jane; Fischer, A. Paige (2 April 2015). "Categorizing the Social Context of the Wildland Urban Interface: Adaptive Capacity for Wildfire and Community "Archetypes"". Forest Science. 61 (2): 298–310. doi: 10.5849/forsci.14-036 .
  • Fischer, A Paige; Spies, Thomas A; Steelman, Toddi A; Moseley, Cassandra; Johnson, Bart R; Bailey, John D; Ager, Alan A; Bourgeron, Patrick; Charnley, Susan; Collins, Brandon M; Kline, Jeffrey D; Leahy, Jessica E; Littell, Jeremy S; Millington, James DA; Nielsen-Pincus, Max; Olsen, Christine S; Paveglio, Travis B; Roos, Christopher I; Steen-Adams, Michelle M; Stevens, Forrest R; Vukomanovic, Jelena; White, Eric M; Bowman, David MJS (June 2016). "Wildfire risk as a socioecological pathology". Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 14 (5): 276–284. doi: 10.1002/fee.1283 . hdl: 2027.42/120492 .

Awards and honors

Public engagement

Fischer currently serves as a board member for the American Association of Geographers' specialty group called the Human Dimensions of Global Change. This group provides recommendations to the National Science Foundation for better understanding and responding to human influences on the natural world. Additionally, she serves on the Executive Council of the International Association of Society and Natural Resources. This organization works to integrate the social sciences into natural resource policies. Fischer is also affiliated with the Society of American Foresters and the Fulbright Association.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Forest Service</span> Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture

The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering 193 million acres (780,000 km2) of land. The major divisions of the agency are the Chief's Office, National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, Business Operations, as well as Research and Development. The agency manages about 25% of federal lands and is the sole major national land management agency not part of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Landscape ecology</span> Science of relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems

Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems. This is done within a variety of landscape scales, development spatial patterns, and organizational levels of research and policy. Landscape ecology can be described as the science of "landscape diversity" as the synergetic result of biodiversity and geodiversity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Habitat conservation</span> Management practice for protecting types of environments

Habitat conservation is a management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore habitats and prevent species extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range. It is a priority of many groups that cannot be easily characterized in terms of any one ideology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Controlled burn</span> Technique to reduce potential fuel for wildfire through managed burning

A controlled or prescribed (Rx) burn is the practice of intentionally setting a fire to change the assemblage of vegetation and decaying material in a landscape. The purpose could be for forest management, ecological restoration, land clearing or wildfire fuel management. A controlled burn may also refer to the intentional burning of slash and fuels through burn piles. Controlled burns may also be referred to as hazard reduction burning, backfire, swailing or a burn-off. In industrialized countries, controlled burning regulations and permits are usually overseen by fire control authorities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forest management</span> Branch of forestry

Forest management is a branch of forestry concerned with overall administrative, legal, economic, and social aspects, as well as scientific and technical aspects, such as silviculture, forest protection, and forest regulation. This includes management for timber, aesthetics, recreation, urban values, water, wildlife, inland and nearshore fisheries, wood products, plant genetic resources, and other forest resource values. Management objectives can be for conservation, utilisation, or a mixture of the two. Techniques include timber extraction, planting and replanting of different species, building and maintenance of roads and pathways through forests, and preventing fire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natural resource management</span>

Natural resource management (NRM) is the management of natural resources such as land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations (stewardship).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sustainable Forestry Initiative</span> North American forest certification standard

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is a sustainability organization operating in the U.S. and Canada that works across four pillars: standards, conservation, community, and education. SFI was founded in 1994 by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA). SFI is the world's largest single forest certification standard by area. SFI is headquartered in Ottawa and Washington, D.C.

Salvage logging is the practice of logging trees in forest areas that have been damaged by wildfire, flood, severe wind, disease, insect infestation, or other natural disturbance in order to recover economic value that would otherwise be lost.

The Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) is one of five regional units that make up the United States Forest Service Research and Development organization — the most extensive natural resources research organization in the world. The station headquarters are located in Fort Collins, Colorado. Research is structured within eight science program areas. The Station employs over 400 permanent full-time employees, including roughly 100 research scientists.

An intact forest landscape (IFL) is an unbroken natural landscape of a forest ecosystem and its habitat–plant community components, in an extant forest zone. An IFL is a natural environment with no signs of significant human activity or habitat fragmentation, and of sufficient size to contain, support, and maintain the complex of indigenous biodiversity of viable populations of a wide range of genera and species, and their ecological effects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Traditional ecological knowledge</span> Indigenous and other traditional knowledge of local resources

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) describes indigenous and other traditional knowledge of local resources. As a field of study in North American anthropology, TEK refers to "a cumulative body of knowledge, belief, and practice, evolving by accumulation of TEK and handed down through generations through traditional songs, stories and beliefs. It is concerned with the relationship of living beings with their traditional groups and with their environment." Indigenous knowledge is not a universal concept among various societies, but is referred to a system of knowledge traditions or practices that are heavily dependent on "place".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecosystem management</span> Natural resource management

Ecosystem management is an approach to natural resource management that aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and persistence of an ecosystem's function and services while meeting socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs. Although indigenous communities have employed sustainable ecosystem management approaches implicitly for millennia, ecosystem management emerged explicitly as a formal concept in the 1990s from a growing appreciation of the complexity of ecosystems and of humans' reliance and influence on natural systems.

Community-based management (CBM) is a bottom up approach of organization which can be facilitated by an upper government or NGO structure but it aims for local stakeholder participation in the planning, research, development, management and policy making for a community as a whole. The decentralization of managing tactics enables local people to deal with the unique social, political and ecological problems their community might face and find solutions ideal to their situation. Overwhelming national or local economic, political and social pressures can affect the efficiency of CBM as well as its long term application. CBM varies across spatial and temporal scales to reflect the ever-changing distinctive physical and/or human environment it is acting within. While the specifics of each practice might differ, existing research maintains that community based management, when implemented properly, is incredibly beneficial not only for the health of the environment, but also for the well-being of the stakeholders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forest restoration</span>

Forest restoration is defined as "actions to re-instate ecological processes, which accelerate recovery of forest structure, ecological functioning and biodiversity levels towards those typical of climax forest", i.e. the end-stage of natural forest succession. Climax forests are relatively stable ecosystems that have developed the maximum biomass, structural complexity and species diversity that are possible within the limits imposed by climate and soil and without continued disturbance from humans. Climax forest is therefore the target ecosystem, which defines the ultimate aim of forest restoration. Since climate is a major factor that determines climax forest composition, global climate change may result in changing restoration aims. Additionally, the potential impacts of climate change on restoration goals must be taken into account, as changes in temperature and precipitation patterns may alter the composition and distribution of climax forests.

Environmental stewardship refers to the responsible use and protection of the natural environment through active participation in conservation efforts and sustainable practices by individuals, small groups, nonprofit organizations, federal agencies, and other collective networks. Aldo Leopold (1887–1949) championed environmental stewardship in land ethics, exploring the ethical implications of "dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it."

The restoration economy is the economic activity associated with regenerative land use, such as ecological restoration activities. It stands in contrast to economic activity premised on sprawl, or on the extraction or depletion of natural resources. The term is meant to convey that activities meant to repair past damage to natural and human communities are often economically beneficial at local, regional, and national scales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wildfires in the United States</span> Wildfires that occur in the United States

Wildfires can happen in many places in the United States, especially during droughts, but are most common in the Western United States and Florida. They may be triggered naturally, most commonly by lightning, or by human activity like unextinguished smoking materials, faulty electrical equipment, overheating automobiles, or arson.

Dominique Bachelet is a senior climate change scientist and associate professor in Oregon State University, with over 38 years of education and work in the fields of climate change, fire, and ecology. She has worked to make science more accessible, by creating web based resources with various scientific organizations. She returned to Oregon State University in 2017 but has continued her outreach work, getting valuable information to students, scientists, and scholars.

Erika S. Zavaleta is an American professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Zavaleta is recognized for her research focusing on topics including plant community ecology, conservation practices for terrestrial ecosystems, and impacts of community dynamics on ecosystem functions.

Susan G. Conard is an American scientist whose expertise focuses on wildland fires in Northern California and Taiga. During the 1980s and 1990s, Conard worked as a research and project leader for the United States Forest Service, publishing pieces on fire management and carbon sequestration. She is currently the editor for the International Journal of Wildland Fire.

References

  1. 1 2 Fischer, Paige; Kline, Jeff; Ager, Alan (September 2016). "Polishing the Prism: Improving Wildfire Mitigation Planning by Coupling Landscape and Social Dimensions" (PDF). Science Findings (189) via USDA Forest Service.
  2. Fischer, A. Paige; Charnley, Susan (11 April 2012). "Risk and Cooperation: Managing Hazardous Fuel in Mixed Ownership Landscapes". Environmental Management. 49 (6): 1192–1207. Bibcode:2012EnMan..49.1192F. doi:10.1007/s00267-012-9848-z. PMC   3350635 . PMID   22525987.
  3. Fischer, Paige; Charnley, Susan (2010). "Social and cultural influences on management for carbon sequestration on U.S. family forestlands: a literature synthesis". International Journal of Forestry Research. 14 via US Forest Service.
  4. Smith, Alistair; Kolden, Crystal; Prichard, Susan; Gray, Robert; Hessburg, Paul; Balch, Jennifer (20 August 2018). "Recognizing Women Leaders in Fire Science". Fire. 1 (2): 30. doi: 10.3390/fire1020030 .
  5. Fischer, A. Paige (2015). "A boundary-spanning organization for transdisciplinary science on land stewardship: The Stewardship Network". Ecology and Society. 20 (4). doi: 10.5751/ES-08121-200438 .