Susan Charnley

Susan Charnley is a research social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, Oregon. Her research investigates how best to achieve the dual goals of environmental conservation and rural community well-being. Charnley works from the regional to the international scales. For nearly a decade, one of her research emphasis areas has been on how different types of forest landowners manage their lands to reduce wildfire risk, the social factors that enable and constrain success, and how to support landowners in restoring fire resilient forests across land ownerships. She also investigates how forest landowners can cooperate with their neighbors to reduce wildfire risk across property boundaries at the landscape scale. Charnley hopes that information generated from this research can be used to create a more enabling social environment for implementing wildfire management actions.

Charnley holds both a PhD and master's degree in anthropology from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in biology and environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.