The production of destruction: How society invented the flammable Lost Pines "Forest" of Texas
Topics:
Keywords: wildfire, political ecology, environmental history, discourse analysis, disasters, Texas
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Norman Lee May, Texas A&M University
Urs Kreuter, Texas A&M University
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Abstract
Property destruction during wildfire, while influenced by natural phenomena and anthropogenic climate change, is ultimately dependent on material landscape conditions. This concept of destruction, often quantified in financial amounts, is a social construction based on human values applied to material objects. Studies show a correlation between increased wildfire destruction and exurban development in fire-adapted ecosystems, commonly referred to as the Wildland-Urban Influence (WUI). Few studies, however, focus on the active social-ecological processes that produce the WUI and concomitant wildfire destruction. Addressing the root causes of wildfire destruction, rather than the symptoms, requires a conceptual shift away from the study of specific landscapes, such as the WUI, to the study of social-ecological processes. This reframing benefits from critical and humanities driven approaches. My study applies this framework to a case study of the 2011 Bastrop County Complex Fire. The Bastrop County Complex Fire was neither the largest fire by size nor the longest fire by duration in Texas’ 2011 fire season alone, yet it remains the most destructive and arguably most impactful wildfire in Texas history. The root cause of this destruction lies in incentive-based economic pressures that encourage modification of the surrounding ecosystem and development of the WUI. Using environmental history, I present a discursive investigation of the foundational systems and processes that produced material conditions susceptible to wildfire destruction in 2011 and explore whether these systems and processes have changed. Preliminary assessments indicate that these conditions remain and are setting the stage for another potentially destructive fire.
The production of destruction: How society invented the flammable Lost Pines "Forest" of Texas
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Paper Abstract