Social Capital in State Prescribed Burn Networks: Comparing North Carolina and Oklahoma Cases

Prescribed fire provides a valuable tool for habitat management and restoration. Practitioner networks in Oklahoma and North Carolina are compared using government and nonprofit organizational actors as the units of analysis. Measures of individual and network social capital are used to compare actor importance and collaboration with other actor types as well as network centralization and density. The results indicate that the two networks are similar in structure, but that there are differences which include the composition of core and peripheral actor groups as well as prominence of certain actor types. The data reported here suggest a common structural composition of prescribed fire networks. This information may prove useful in adapting similar state networks or determining how to improve the performance of existing networks. Increasing the social capital is a pathway to improve prescribed burning and integrate long-term ecological strategies and funding sources with short-term goals and labor capabilities.