Large Recreation Declines Persist for Years after Severe Wildfire but Not after Low-Severity or Prescribed Fire

作者：Kyle Manley, Spencer Wood, Cody Evers, Holly Nowell, Anna LoPresti, Katherine Siegel, Jennifer Balch, Laura Braun, Ash Cale, Jason Kreitler, Tyler McIntosh, Jamie Peeler, Miguel Villarreal, Laura Dee · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.22541/essoar.15002752/v1 · 被引用次数：1 · 研究领域：Fire effects on ecosystems、Recreation, Leisure, Wilderness Management、Disaster Management and Resilience

Wildfire and recreational use of public lands have surged, particularly across the US West.In response to intensifying wildfire, land managers are also expanding prescribed fire for fuel-reduction.Yet how either fire type reshapes visitation, remains poorly quantified, limiting managers' ability to account for important hidden values provided by public lands.We analyze wildfire and prescribed fire sites (N = 185 and 54, respectively) across California and Colorado public lands, advancing a casual inference approach that leverages 11 million digital-mobility observations, from cell phones, social media, and citizen science apps, in a visitation model.This is the first landscape-scale causally-identified estimate of how fire type, severity, and social-ecological context shape public land visitation over time.Wildfires reduced visitation (-8% to -18% one year post-fire), with impacts scaling with severity.High-severity fires in California produced persistent losses (-33% year one; -44% year five), whereas low-severity effects remained near-neutral across both states.Forested sites drove losses while grassland fires produced minimal impacts.Prescribed fire effects were state-dependent (positive in Colorado, negative in California) but transient, with no effect after three years.High-recreation counties experienced disproportionate wildfire impacts in Colorado (-11% vs. -2%) and in California for high-severity fires (-28% vs -8%).Fire characteristics and social-ecological systems ...