Browsing by Author "Scott, Ryan, advisor"

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Open Access
Community capacity and collaborative wildfire planning: the role of capacity in acquiring federal mitigation grant funding
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Ryan, Benjamin, author; Scott, Ryan, advisor; Goes, Iasmin, committee member; Burkhardt, Jesse, committee member
Since the passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act two decades ago, Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) have become the predominant planning tool for community preparedness, risk mitigation, and response; improving coordination between governments, natural resource management agencies, and residents; give communities the ability access federal grant funding programs in the Western United States. Research on CWPPs has mainly been the focus of case studies, with relatively few large-scale studies to understand how a community's biophysical, socio-economic, vulnerability, and social conditions account for the variation in federal grant allocation. This study includes over 1,000 CWPPs in 11 states to evaluate the conditions that precipitate the allocation of grant funds for risk mitigation and community resilience. Through the estimation of a Binomial Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation Model to estimate the probability of winning grant funds based on the included indicators. Findings indicate that grant winnings are closely correlated with biophysical risk, financial capacity, and CWPP Update status, while socially vulnerable communities were more likely not to receive grant funds. However, we fail to find evidence that social capital affects the likelihood of winning grant funds. These findings suggest a need for a more equitable distribution of federal grant funds to mitigate wildfire risk properly.
Open Access
NEPA implementation and trust: linking stakeholder trust to substantive effectiveness in U.S. Forest Service fuels reduction projects
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Hall, Hailey R., author; Scott, Ryan, advisor; Gottlieb, Madeline, committee member; Schultz, Courtney, committee member
Trust matters; but, rather than take it as a given, this study presents an empirical snapshot of how trust matters, what types of trust matter, and how those trust types interact within and on National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) substantive effectiveness. I define substantive effectiveness as the degree to which the policy meets its established aims of considering environmental effects and including the public in the process. Using documents and public comments from two U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Fuels Reduction projects in the Boulder Ranger District in Colorado, I assessed stakeholder trust judgements by coding trust types and frequencies. I then used process tracing to examine how stakeholder trust types interact with one another and relate to substantive effectiveness. I found that interpersonal trust, interpersonal distrust, and institutional distrust play prominent but varied roles within the NEPA process. First, interpersonal trust mediates the effect of institutional distrust on the substantive effectiveness of the NEPA process. Second, higher levels of institutional and interpersonal distrust result in more substantive changes in the NEPA environmental assessment process. Through improved understanding of the roles and functions of stakeholder trust types on the NEPA process, we add nuanced understanding to established expectations of how trust and distrust operate within natural resource planning and management.
Open Access
The development and implementation of agrivoltaic systems internationally
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Collignon, Anne, C., author; Scott, Ryan, advisor; Olofsson, Kristin, committee member
Agrivoltaics was first developed in the 1980s and first began being used around 2004 with the purpose of combining agricultural activity and solar energy generation. Between 2015 and 2024, the world witnessed an increase in the development of renewable energy sources like solar energy, as well as an increase in the need to solve land use disputes, preserve the health and soil quality of thousands of acres of land, diversify revenue sources, and in some cases increase crop yields and ecological benefits to land within agriculture (Ballard et al., 2023). Agrivoltaics has been studied extensively in terms of technical aspects, and is helpful for increased crop yield, reduced water evaporation and soil preservation, lower temperatures, diversified income and off-set prosecution costs. The purpose of this study is to analyze agrivoltaic development within specific countries of the world and identify factors related to governmental and structural aspects that affect implementation. In order to do this, I analyzed agriculture data as well as renewable energy and solar energy development, overlaying them and looking for areas where there is both high crop productivity and high solar energy generation. Within this analysis, three countries were chosen as case studies for analysis: Germany, Thailand, and Chile. Research was done on government and structural policy to explain why and how agricultural and solar development occurred, and how agrivoltaics has or has not developed as another form of renewable energy. Eleven factors affecting implementation of agrivoltaics were identified, including factors relating to investment and government financial support, electricity generation and forms of renewable energy, and various aspects of agricultural structure and climate change effects. Many of the factors affecting these countries and worldwide vary according to governmental structure and geographic and regional location, and there is still much to be studied and understood about the benefits and viability of implementation of agrivoltaics.