Our study contributes to scholarly literature by investigating
whether shared concern about a pressing landscape-scale problem
such as wildfire could counter homophily as an influence on
the structure of a large organizational network. We confirm that
homophily is a powerful influence on social organization even
in cases of shared concern about pressing natural resource problems.
Our research also provides an empirical example of how
network analysis can illuminate opportunities and constraints for
cooperative natural resource planning among organizations operating
in the same landscape or ecoregion. It provides a method for
assessing capacity for landscape planning through quantification of
the bonding and bridging social capital in a network. By testing the
differences between observed bonding and bridging social capital
and what would be expected by chance in a network of organizations
concerned about wildfire, this study provides insights on the
utility of a structural approach for investigating human capacity for
landscape-scale planning. The social network analysis methods we
use to assess social capacity for landscapeplanning in Oregoncanbe
replicated in other regions of the USA and the world where diverse
sets of stakeholder organizations seek to address natural resource
problems that operate on large spatial scales and where recognition
of the importance of cooperation across ownerships on management
is growing; for example in Australia, where landscape-scale
planning is gaining traction (Brunckhorst, 2011) including on the
problem of wildfire