PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 10: Restoration and Adaptive Management
Tuesday, August 9, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal

A discursive perspective on forest health.

Walker, Aaron^*,1, ¹ Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States

ABSTRACT- With the increasing frequency and destructive potential of wildfires in the American Southwest, the time is ripe for an interdisciplinary investigation into not only the science of forest fires and forest health, but into the historical, socio-economic, and discursive genesis of these hazardous conditions. Bringing into focus the interface of material conditions (such as excess fuels) and their discursive foundations is the case study of one of the most destructive fires in the U.S. in recent memory–the Rodeo-Chediski blaze of 2002. Prior to the blaze, in the Northern Arizona towns of Pinetop/Lakeside and Showlow and the neighboring Indian reservations, there existed a number of distinct socio-economic political groups, each with different aims, resources, and levels of political access. Economically, the region is home to two seemingly irreconcilable markets: the extraction economy (logging etc. . .) and the amenity economy (luxury homes, tourism, etc. . .). Add to the economic complications a demographic schism between full-time residents second home-owners/part-time residents, the racial politics of the Indian reservations and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the topography of the discursive battle ground surrounding forest fire policy and forest health begins to become interpretable. The multidimensional insights that interdisciplinary investigations allow are indispensable additions to the scientific insights that fire science, physics, and climatology afford policymakers. The poster seeks to determine to what extent the role of discourse is involved in shaping the material conditions of fire hazards or forest health. The intellectual merit of such an endeavor lies in the problemitization of dominant discourses. Such a process reveals not only sites of oppression and normalization, but it also reveals sites of/for resistance. By incorporating indigenous and disenfranchised knowledges into the dominant discourses circulating in the debates over fire policy and forest health the broader impacts of this research will be to open the possibility of more informed, fair, and ultimately successful forest management strategies that could not only better preserve human life and property, but also contribute to a more sustainable and symbiotic political-economy in the wildland-urban interface.

Key words: forest health, discourse, foreest fire, wildland urban interface