THE SOCIAL LEARNING PROCESSES INVOLVED IN INCORPORATING WILDFIRE RISK REDUCTION STRATEGIES INTO FOREST HARVESTING PLANS IN NORTHERN SASKATCHEWAN

Abstract

Increased risk of wildfires is a main concern for the Province of Saskatchewan with respect to climate change. There is an urgent need for natural resource-based sectors to make adaptive management changes to their operations to prepare for and adapt to these increases. This research project was undertaken in partnership with Sakâw Askiy Management Inc., a forestry corporation located in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and stakeholders and rightsholders of the Prince Albert Forest Management Area. In the field of climate change adaptation, there is an established realization that learning is an integral part of any adaptive management process. However, there is lack of consensus on how to define and measure learning, what relationships exist between social interactions and learning, and how environments shape learning This project addresses this knowledge gap by describing the learning processes that occur through the development of landscape-level wildfire risk reduction strategies in Prince Albert.