scholarly journals Understanding the Role of Planners in Wildfire Preparedness and Mitigation

ISRN Forestry ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menka Bihari ◽  
Elisabeth M. Hamin ◽  
Robert L. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Regulatory Authority ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Wildland Urban Interface

As wildfires affect more residential areas across the United States, the need for collaboration between land managers, federal agencies, neighbours, and local governments has become more pressing especially in the context of the wildland-urban interface. Previous research has not focused much on land-use planners’ role in wildfire mitigation. This paper provides information on how land-use planners can assist communities in learning to live with wildfire risk through planning, preparedness, and mitigation efforts in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Based on interviews with land-use planners, forest planners, and local emergency management officials, we identified a range of tools that could be used for improving wildfire preparedness and mitigation initiatives in the WUI, but also found that planners felt that they lacked the regulatory authority to use these tenaciously. The paper also identifies a range of possible actions that would contribute towards safer building practices in the interface communities.

scholarly journals Overcoming the barriers to green procurement in the county: Interest groups and administrative professionalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christy Smith ◽  
Jessica Terman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Green Procurement ◽  
Environmentally Responsible ◽  
Government Involvement ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change

Scholars and practitioners have come to understand the important role of local governments in the causes and effects of climate change. The literature has examined both the substantive and symbolic determinants of urban sustainability policies in addition to the implementation issues associated with those policies. At the heart of these policies is the idea that local governments have the desire and ability to engage in socially and environmentally responsible practices to mitigate climate change. While important, these studies are missing a key component in the investigation of local government involvement in sustainability policies: government purchasing power. This study examines the effect of administrative professionalism and interest group presence on the determinants of green procurement in the understudied context of counties in the United States.

By Executive Order

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Rudalevige
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Presidential Power ◽  
Executive Order ◽  
Personal Power ◽  
Executive Orders

The president of the United States is commonly thought to wield extraordinary personal power through the issuance of executive orders. In fact, the vast majority of such orders are proposed by federal agencies and shaped by negotiations that span the executive branch. This book provides the first comprehensive look at how presidential directives are written — and by whom. The book examines more than five hundred executive orders from the 1930s to today — as well as more than two hundred others negotiated but never issued — shedding vital new light on the multilateral process of drafting supposedly unilateral directives. The book draws on a wealth of archival evidence from the Office of Management and Budget and presidential libraries as well as original interviews to show how the crafting of orders requires widespread consultation and compromise with a formidable bureaucracy. It explains the key role of management in the presidential skill set, detailing how bureaucratic resistance can stall and even prevent actions the chief executive desires, and how presidents must bargain with the bureaucracy even when they seek to act unilaterally. Challenging popular conceptions about the scope of presidential power, the book reveals how the executive branch holds the power to both enact and constrain the president's will.

Should Tamiflu™ be stockpiled locally?

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Sandro Cinti, MD ◽  
Gerald Blackburn, DO
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Avian Influenza ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
The United States ◽  
H5n1 Avian Influenza ◽  
Control And Prevention ◽  
Federal Response

The outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in Asia raises serious concerns about an influenza pandemic of the kind seen in 1918. In addition, the recent federal response to Hurricane Katrina highlights the need for advanced local preparation for biological disasters. It is clear that there will not be enough vaccine early in an influenza pandemic. Without vaccine, the role of antivirals, especially oseltamivir (Tamiflu™), in treatment and prophylaxis becomes of paramount importance. It is unlikely that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be able to stockpile enough oseltamivir to protect every first responder in the United States. Thus, it is important that local governments and hospitals consider stockpiling oseltamivir for the treatment and/or prophylaxis of local first responders.

scholarly journals New mobile realities in mature staples-dependent resource regions: Local governments and work camps

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 500-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura M Ryser ◽  
Greg Halseth ◽  
Sean Markey ◽  
Marleen Morris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Quality And Safety ◽  
Retention Strategies ◽  
Work Camps ◽  
Municipal Boundaries

In resource-dependent regions, work camps have reshaped workforce recruitment and retention strategies and relationships with communities as they are increasingly deployed within municipal boundaries. This has prompted important, but controversial, questions about local government policies and regulations guiding workforce accommodations to support rapid growth in resource regions. Even as mobile workforces become more prevalent, however, few researchers have examined the development, operations, and decommissioning of these work camps. Drawing upon the experiences of local governments in Australia, Canada, Scotland, and the United States, this research examines how mobile workforces are shaping the opportunities and challenges of planning and local government operations through work camps integrated in mature staples-dependent resource regions. Our findings reveal that while some industries have taken the initiative to implement new protocols and operating procedures to improve the quality and safety of work camp environments, local governments have underdeveloped policy tools and capacities to guide the development, operations, and decommissioning of work camps. Failure to purposefully address work camps as a land-use issue, however, is significant for mature staples-dependent towns that ultimately fail to capture taxation revenues while incurring the accelerating costs for infrastructure and services associated with large mobile workforces.

scholarly journals Defunding Hate: PayPal’s Regulation of Hate Groups

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 46-53
Author(s):  
Natasha Tusikov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Regulatory Authority ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Hate Groups ◽  
Screening Practices ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
White Supremacists

The riot by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, generated a public debate about the role of platforms in policing users involved in violent hate speech. PayPal’s efforts on this issue, in removing services from some designated hate groups while continuing to serve others, highlights the challenges payment platforms face when they act, whether formally or informally, as regulators. This article examines PayPal’s policies and enforcement efforts, both proactive and reactive, in removing its services from hate groups in the United States. It pays particular attention to the surveillance and screening practices that PayPal employs to proactively detect users who violate its policies. The article argues that public calls for PayPal to identify and remove its services from hate groups raise critical questions about ceding broad regulatory authority to platforms and reveal the serious challenges of relying upon commercial enterprises to address complex social problems.

scholarly journals Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (11) ◽  
pp. 2946-2951 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer K. Balch ◽  
Bethany A. Bradley ◽  
John T. Abatzoglou ◽  
R. Chelsea Nagy ◽  
Emily J. Fusco ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Fire Risk ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Western United States ◽  
Fire Season ◽  
Direct Role ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Government Records

The economic and ecological costs of wildfire in the United States have risen substantially in recent decades. Although climate change has likely enabled a portion of the increase in wildfire activity, the direct role of people in increasing wildfire activity has been largely overlooked. We evaluate over 1.5 million government records of wildfires that had to be extinguished or managed by state or federal agencies from 1992 to 2012, and examined geographic and seasonal extents of human-ignited wildfires relative to lightning-ignited wildfires. Humans have vastly expanded the spatial and seasonal “fire niche” in the coterminous United States, accounting for 84% of all wildfires and 44% of total area burned. During the 21-y time period, the human-caused fire season was three times longer than the lightning-caused fire season and added an average of 40,000 wildfires per year across the United States. Human-started wildfires disproportionally occurred where fuel moisture was higher than lightning-started fires, thereby helping expand the geographic and seasonal niche of wildfire. Human-started wildfires were dominant (>80% of ignitions) in over 5.1 million km2, the vast majority of the United States, whereas lightning-started fires were dominant in only 0.7 million km2, primarily in sparsely populated areas of the mountainous western United States. Ignitions caused by human activities are a substantial driver of overall fire risk to ecosystems and economies. Actions to raise awareness and increase management in regions prone to human-started wildfires should be a focus of United States policy to reduce fire risk and associated hazards.

California’s Regulatory Leadership: Broader Implications

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-244
Author(s):  
David Vogel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Pacific

This concluding chapter reviews the key themes of the book and explores some of the broader implications of this analysis of California's regulatory leadership. Three points are particularly critical: the importance of the local dimension of environmental policies, the role of business in environmental politics, and the limits of environmental regulation. The chapter then discusses the increasingly important role states are playing in environmental protection in the United States and shows how California has economically benefited from its environmental policy leadership. One important reason why California has been able to consistently adopt more stringent regulations than those of the federal government and other states is that many of its improvements in local and state environmental quality have been a source of competitive advantage. The improvements it has made in air quality—most notably in Los Angeles—its protection of the trees in the Sierras and along the Pacific, and its land use controls along the coast and around the San Francisco Bay have all made California a more attractive place to move to, invest in, and visit.

The Economic Drivers of Forest Land Use and the Role of Markets in the United States

2011 ◽  
pp. 321-336
Author(s):  
Lisa Henke ◽  
Caitlin O’Brady ◽  
Deborah Spalding ◽  
Mary L. Tyrrell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
The United States ◽  
Forest Land

scholarly journals Rapid growth of the US wildland-urban interface raises wildfire risk

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (13) ◽  
pp. 3314-3319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker C. Radeloff ◽  
David P. Helmers ◽  
H. Anu Kramer ◽  
Miranda H. Mockrin ◽  
Patricia M. Alexandre ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Land Use Type ◽  
Land Area ◽  
Wildland Urban Interface ◽  
Housing Growth ◽  
The Us

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where houses and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle, and where wildfire problems are most pronounced. Here we report that the WUI in the United States grew rapidly from 1990 to 2010 in terms of both number of new houses (from 30.8 to 43.4 million; 41% growth) and land area (from 581,000 to 770,000 km2; 33% growth), making it the fastest-growing land use type in the conterminous United States. The vast majority of new WUI areas were the result of new housing (97%), not related to an increase in wildland vegetation. Within the perimeter of recent wildfires (1990–2015), there were 286,000 houses in 2010, compared with 177,000 in 1990. Furthermore, WUI growth often results in more wildfire ignitions, putting more lives and houses at risk. Wildfire problems will not abate if recent housing growth trends continue.

The Role of Gender and Sensation Seeking in Film Choice

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Smita C. Banerjee ◽  
Kathryn Greene ◽  
Marina Krcmar ◽  
Zhanna Bagdasarov ◽  
Dovile Ruginyte
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Sensation Seeking ◽  
Negative Mood ◽  
Positive Mood ◽  
The United States ◽  
High Arousal ◽  
Subject Design ◽  
Happy Mood

This study demonstrates the significance of individual difference factors, particularly gender and sensation seeking, in predicting media choice (examined through hypothetical descriptions of films that participants anticipated they would view). This study used a 2 (Positive mood/negative mood) × 2 (High arousal/low arousal) within-subject design with 544 undergraduate students recruited from a large northeastern university in the United States. Results showed that happy films and high arousal films were preferred over sad films and low-arousal films, respectively. In terms of gender differences, female viewers reported a greater preference than male viewers for happy-mood films. Also, male viewers reported a greater preference for high-arousal films compared to female viewers, and female viewers reported a greater preference for low-arousal films compared to male viewers. Finally, high sensation seekers reported a preference for high-arousal films. Implications for research design and importance of exploring media characteristics are discussed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document