Adaptations to living with fire are multifold, and U.S. wildfire policy has increasingly shifted toward proactive management. The U.S. Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy (WCS) provides coordination and funding for landscape-scale adaptation, yet little is known about how wildfire adaptation is communicated in public online discourse. We analyze press releases, news media, and social media texts from September 2022 to February 2024 to characterize the salience and framing of wildfire adaptation concepts, identify which organizational types are most associated with major themes, and examine geographic variation across ten initial WCS landscapes. Using paragraph-level topic modeling and thematic clustering, we find that wildfire adaptation communication is dominated by prescribed fire, but that most adaptation concepts represented in the Fire Adapted Communities wheel appear across channels. Prescribed fire discourse is internally differentiated (operations, weather windows, and risk/safeguards), and thematic emphasis varies by platform and communicator type. We also observe meaningful state-level variation in adaptation themes within Twitter/X data, consistent with differences in fire history, governance context, and public attention. Together, these findings map a distributed wildfire adaptation communication ecosystem and highlight where key adaptation elements (e.g., codes, ordinances, and continuity planning) remain comparatively absent from public-facing discourse.

There is great diversity in the natural environments that humans interact with. It is important to understand how this physical diversity influences the psychological experience of nature activities. In this study, we used a keyword search to identify Twitter posts in the United States ( N tweets = 391,577) discussing a nature-based experience. Using topic modeling to determine how people share their experiences, we examined how the resulting topics varied by the surrounding physical environment, which was determined using either visual features of images ( N tweets = 61,661) or geo-location data ( N tweets = 15,571). A myriad of themes emerged from the topic model, including photography, hunting, hiking, and family fun. All topics had an average positive valence and many reflected affective and social processes. The prevalence of topics was associated with geospatial and image properties. Overall, the results emphasize that the physical environment predicts the multi-faceted impacts of nature engagement on cognitive processes.

While research has documented clear regional differences in environmental attitudes and behaviors, less is understood about the role of shared moral values in shaping these variations. This gap poses a critical challenge to designing effective climate action strategies. Many environmental initiatives rely on "moral framing" to promote proenvironmental behavior, often targeting specific geographical areas like cities or counties. However, these strategies may falter if they fail to account for the unique moral landscapes that shape climate beliefs and actions in different regions. To maximize the success of these interventions, it is crucial to understand how collective moral values influence environmental engagement across diverse communities. Across two studies, we offer insights at the collective level into the moral psychology of climate change by investigating how county-level moral values can predict (i) green attitudes and (ii) household carbon emissions within those counties after accounting for political behavior and region-specific factors. Using Bayesian geospatial modeling, we find that counties that endorse purity and fairness show higher environmental concerns and lower emissions across 3,102 US counties in 48 states. While political orientation strongly predicts environmental attitudes, moral values appear to be a more important factor in predicting carbon footprints. We discuss how county-level dynamics deviate from individual-level dynamics. Our community-level evidence can be leveraged to enhance green interventions on a regional scale by aligning them with the local populace's prevailing values and lived experiences, thus bolstering public support and increasing the likelihood of successful climate action initiatives.

1. Addressing social and ecological values is a central aim of democratic environmental management and policymaking, especially during deliberative and participatory processes. Agencies responsible for managing public lands would benefit from a deepened understanding of how various publics value those lands. 2. Federal land management agencies receive millions of written comments from the public on proposed management actions annually, providing a unique source of insights into how the public assigns value to public lands. To date, little attention has been directed towards methods for analysing the public's comments to understand their expressed values, in part because the volume of comments often makes manual analysis unworkable. 3. This study introduces and applies a novel computational approach to inferring values in written text by using natural language processing and a method that combines a lexicon with semantic embedding models. We developed embedding models for four types of values that are expressed in public comments. We then fit models to 409,241 public comments on actions proposed by the United States Forest Service from 2011 to 2020 and regulated by the National Environmental Policy Act. 4. The embedding model generally outperformed the lexicon word-count, particularly for value types with shorter lexicons, and, like human evaluators, the embedding models performed better for more evident values and were less reliable for more abstract or latent values. 5. By applying the resulting model, we furthered our understanding of how the public values National Forest lands in the United States. We observed that aesthetic and moral values were expressed more often in comments for projects that received more public interest, as gauged by the number of comments a project received and in comments for projects addressing recreational management.

Humanity has a shrinking window to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yet climate action is still lacking on both individual and policy levels. We argue that this is because behavioral interventions have largely neglected the basic principles of operant conditioning as one set of tools to promote collective climate action. In this perspective, we propose an operant conditioning framework that uses rewards and punishments to shape transportation, food, waste, housing, and civic actions. This framework highlights the value of reinforcement in encouraging the switch to low-emission behavior, while also considering the benefit of decreasing high-emission behavior to expedite the transition. This approach also helps explain positive and negative spillovers from behavioral interventions. This paper provides a recipe to design individual-level and system-level interventions to generate and sustain low-emission behavior to help achieve net zero emissions.

Diverse workforce representation helps organizations achieve their goals and is important for government agencies that seek to gain public trust. Prior research has examined patterns of representation in the USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) and found an overall lack of representation despite advances at leadership levels. Federal agencies are required to report total workforce demographics; however, representation relative to local communities is rarely known. Using data from the US Census Bureau, we examined demographic profiles of populations within a 1-hour drive time around Forest Service workplaces relative to workforce demographics at each workplace. The Forest Service had a greater proportion of white employees than the US population as a whole, and racial/ethnicity diversity was lower than surrounding communities at 99.7

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being 1 , 2 , addressing the global biodiversity crisis 3 still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature’s diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever 4 . Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature’s values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) 5 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals 6 , predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature 7 . Arguably, a ‘values crisis’ underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change 8 , pandemic emergence 9 and socio-environmental injustices 10 . On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature’s diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions 7 , 11 . Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures.

A diverse, representative workforce is both beneficial and legally mandated for U.S. federal agencies. While previous research documents overall diversity within public agencies, like the USDA Forest Service, little is known about career outcomes and trajectories within these agencies. In this work, we look at individual-level career metrics which reveal patterns in employee retention, advancement, and termination. Using employment data for over 25,000 USDA Forest Service employees, we found that race/ethnicity, gender, and the interaction of these variables significantly related to each career metric. For instance, BIPOC female employees entered at a higher grade but advanced more slowly and spent fewer years with the agency. BIPOC male employees started at lower grades and were more likely to be terminated than any other group. These results suggest that career performance within the Forest Service varies substantially as a function of race and gender. Additional research is needed to uncover why these unequal outcomes occur.

Achieving the intertwined goals of justice and sustainability requires transformative changes to meaningfully engage diverse perspectives. Therefore, scholars and policymakers need new ways of recognising and addressing nature's multiple values across cultures, disciplines and other knowledge traditions. By reviewing academic publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local community sources, we developed an inclusive typology of nature's values to clarify value concepts and guide their consideration in decisions. Through case studies, we illustrate how navigating 'horizontal' and 'vertical' interactions within and across this typology can help confront plural-value challenges, such as enhancing inclusive participation in environmental research and practice, and effective management of socio-environmental conflicts. We conclude by exploring how this typology of values can further leverage transformative change in other decision-making contexts.

Women and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) employees are underrepresented in science and natural resource management institutions. Student and recent graduate trainee and internship programs have been used to try to address this in United States federal agencies over the last few decades. Our study evaluates how effective such programs are at improving U.S. federal workforce diversity. We used a comprehensive employee dataset from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service–which has the largest natural resource management workforce in the country–to analyze the demographic characteristics and career paths of paid interns from 1996–2017. We found that a majority of employees who started as interns later converted to permanent employment with the USDA Forest Service. In addition, Black and Hispanic interns were, respectively, 5 and 3 times more likely than White interns to work for the agency in permanent positions after their internships. However, people who started as interns had significantly shorter USDA Forest Service careers than those who started in permanent positions. White women entering directly into permanent positions typically advanced to higher pay grades through promotion faster than White women who entered as interns. Finally, male BIPOC interns involuntarily separated (i.e., were fired) at significantly higher rates than all other employees. Our study suggests that while internship employment programs can be an effective tool for hiring a diverse workforce, they are not sufficient to close the overall workforce diversity gap. In addition, only a small percentage of new hires every year are interns. To achieve a level of representation that mirrors the civilian labor force, our study suggests that internship programs need to focus on long-term employee retention and be of significantly larger scale.

Background. Media wildfire coverage can shape public knowledge on fire-related issues, and potentially influence management decisions, so understanding the content of its coverage is important. Previous research examining media wildfire coverage has primarily focused on either a single fire or issue, and provides little insight about the range of wildfire-related topics discussed in the media. Aims. We aimed to assess wildfire topics covered in print media between 1986 and 2016 across the USA, Canada and Australia. Methods. Machine learning-based automated content analyses were conducted to identify primary topics within news articles and to map relationships between topics. Key results. News articles related to wildfire were clustered into four topic areas: Fire Response, Management, Environmental Conditions and Property Preparedness. Notable between-country differences emerge: the US media coverage focuses most on firefighting; Canadian coverage, climate change; and Australian coverage, preparedness. Conclusions. Our results reveal that: (1) wildfire media coverage has increased over the past 30 years; (2) coverage is more varied than the common perspective, i.e. media continues to portray fires in a negative light; and (3) topic coverage varies significantly between countries. Implications. These findings can help identify gaps in media coverage, and provide insights into critical topics, or relationships between topics, that may need additional emphasis in conversations about how to better learn to live with fire.

We analyzed USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) employment data from 1995 to 2017, by race and ethnicity, gender, as well as race/ethnicity and gender, to assess progress towards the Forest Service’s goal of achieving a multicultural workforce that reflects the US population. We look at the trends by an employee’s level in the Forest Service and by branch of the Forest Service. Our data show an overall decrease in the workforce by nearly 20

COPYRIGHT © 2022 Sachdeva, Campbell, Johnson and Svendsen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Editorial: The COVID-19 pandemic’s transformation of human relationships with nature at multiple scales

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has unfolded, the media is increasingly recognizing the value of urban nature, with greenspace use increasing. In cities, where people often lack access to private greenspaces, parks and other urban greenspaces offer opportunities for exercise and physically distanced socializing. Previous research has demonstrated the benefits of urban greenspaces to both physical and mental health, during times of relative stability. Here, we seek to examine how people's responses to greenspace are affected by a global pandemic, which uniquely affects both physical movements and mental wellbeing in the population at large. We compare tweets focused on nature- and greenspace-related keywords and hashtags from March to July 2019 with tweets from the same period in 2020 for metropolitan regions in the United States. We also examine the influence of stay-at-home restrictions in 2020. These posts reinforce findings from conventional survey approaches showing that people's relationship to greenspace is multifaceted. Furthermore, the results of our pre–post analysis of people's outdoor use suggest that the pandemic has had a differential impact on these multifaceted dimensions of people's engagement with nature. By applying a multidimensional construct of wellbeing, we identify Positive emotion, Positive relationships, and Meaning as subfactors of wellbeing that potentially can be increased by urban nature. These findings are important in demonstrating that greenspace in cities played a critical role in individuals' resilience and wellbeing during the early months of the pandemic and highlighting the need for maintaining and expanding access to urban greenspaces in the future, for the benefit of all city residents.

This archive contains research data collected and/or funded by Forest Service Research and Development (FS R&D), U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is a resource for accessing both short and long-term FS R&D research data, which includes Experimental Forest and Range data. It is a way to both preserve and share the quality science of our researchers.

As the world contends with the far-ranging impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing environmental crises have, to some extent, been neglected during the pandemic. One reason behind this shift in priorities is the scarcity mindset triggered by the pandemic. Scarcity is the feeling of having less than what is necessary, and it causes people to prioritize immediate short-term needs over long-term ones. Scarcity experienced in the pandemic can reduce the willingness to engage in pro-environmental behavior, leading to environmental degradation that increases the chance of future pandemics. To protect pro-environmental behavior, we argue that it should not be viewed as value-laden and effortful, but rather reconceptualized as actions that address a multitude of human needs including pragmatic actions that conserve resources especially during scarcity. To bolster environmental protection, systematic changes are needed to make pro-environmental behavior better integrated into people's lives, communities, and cities, such that it is more accessible, less costly, and more resilient to future disturbances.

The current study examined how financial scarcity and natural resource scarcity independently and interactively influence sustainable choices and motivations. Participants performed a shopping task where they chose between sustainable and conventional products, and rated their motivations for their choice. We found that financial scarcity reduced sustainable product choices, lowered pro-environmental motivations, but increased motivations to save financial costs (Experiment 1). In contrast, perceived scarcity of natural resources (i.e., water) increased sustainable choices and pro-environmental motivations (Experiment 2). By combining financial and water scarcity, we further replicated and highlighted the distinct impacts of financial scarcity and water scarcity on sustainable choices and motivations (Experiment 3). Our results suggest that the abundance of financial resources or perceived natural resource scarcity can increase green consumer choices and motivations. The findings provide implications for environmental initiatives and campaigns to promote sustainable choices for people with different socio-economic backgrounds and different levels of environmental resources.