Understanding ‘Community’ in Wildfire Research in High-Latitude Areas

With increasing wildfire impacts on communities in high-latitude areas, a call for community involvement in wildfire risk reduction has been widely promoted. Correspondingly, a ‘community-based’ approach has been advocated in research understanding wildfire, with various interpretations of ‘community’ evident in this work. This paper conducted a scoping review to identify and characterise how ‘community’ has been conceptualised and operationalised in research on wildfire risk reduction in high-latitude areas (defined as areas above 50° N). Thirty-one in-scope studies were screened by their interpretations of ‘community’ from the following six dimensions: research background, community role and function, social inclusion and exclusion, participatory approach, power relations, and research innovation and reflexivity. We find that the understanding of ‘community’ has expanded beyond its geographical scale in wildfire research, with increasing recognition and inclusion of diverse demographic attributes. Recent research has increasingly focused on, and worked with, Indigenous Nations, as well as certain community attributes. However, ambiguity over what ‘community’ means exists in wildfire research, with ‘community’ passive participation (13 out of 31) in the research and inadequate critical research reflexivity of the community-based approach (29 of 31). We therefore suggest a critical reflection of the community-based approach in future wildfire research and emphasise community heterogeneity in addressing the impacts of climate change.