Areas of Expertise
- Urban forestry governance
- Wildfire resilience systems
- Environmental policy design
- Institutional and program development
- Regeneration infrastructure planning
- Climate adaptation and landscape resilience
- Governance structure and policy implementation
- Systems-level and cross-sector risk analysis
- Strategic policy and resilience planning
- Nonprofit financial and institutional resilience
- Program design and evaluation
Publications
The Efficiency Gap
Conceptual model explaining how suppressed recovery mechanisms produce escalating system instability across ecological and institutional domains.
Systems, Efficiency, and Democratic Capacity
Examines how declining system efficiency affects democratic institutions' ability to respond to complex public challenges. The analysis explores how recovery constraints, fragmented governance, and rising operational demands reduce institutional capacity over time, with implications for public administration, environmental policy, and long-term societal resilience.
Navigating Revenue Diversification
Balancing Financial Sustainability and Mission Alignment in Small Environmental Nonprofits
Presents original research examining how small environmental organizations manage the tradeoffs between financial survival and mission integrity under conditions of funding uncertainty and resource constraint. The analysis explores how revenue diversification, governance structure, and institutional pressures shape strategic decision-making and long-term organizational resilience.
Institutional Resilience Policy Model
For Resource-Constrained Environmental Organizations
Extends prior analysis into the policy environment, examining how external funding structures, governance conditions, and institutional design shape organizational stability. The paper outlines policy principles that support long-term nonprofit resilience under conditions of financial constraint, environmental uncertainty, and structural pressure.
Urban Tree Renewal for Resilience (UTRR)
A Systems Framework for California
This policy-focused paper outlines the structural rationale for coordinated assessment, removal, replacement, and long-term stewardship of aging or hazardous urban trees. It situates canopy renewal within broader system performance, recovery capacity, and cross-sector resilience design.
Policy Brief: Urban Tree Renewal for Resilience (UTRR)
Closing the Urban Canopy Regeneration Gap
This policy brief presents a systems framework for addressing the growing gap between urban tree loss and coordinated canopy renewal. The UTRR model outlines policy, planning, and infrastructure strategies to support long-term urban forest resilience and climate adaptation.
Core Analytical Contributions
Research Program
Together, these analytical contributions form part of a broader research program examining how ecological infrastructure, governance systems, and institutional capacity shape the resilience of landscapes and communities facing increasing environmental stress.
Efficiency Gap
The Efficiency Gap concept describes a systemic pattern in which increasing resource inputs into environmental or institutional systems produce declining long-term stability when recovery mechanisms are weakened or fragmented. The framework interprets conditions such as wildfire escalation, infrastructure stress, and rising environmental costs as signals of declining regenerative capacity across interconnected systems. By focusing on recovery processes rather than resource throughput alone, the concept provides a diagnostic lens for examining resilience challenges across ecological and governance systems.
Suggested citation
Hanson, D. J. (2026). The efficiency gap: System performance under chronic environmental stress. Wildfire Resilient Landscapes Institute.
Institutional Resilience Policy Model
The Institutional Resilience Policy Model examines how the resilience of environmental organizations is shaped not only by internal management capacity but also by the stability of the broader institutional environment in which they operate. The model highlights how funding volatility, fragmented governance, and policy misalignment can constrain long-term environmental initiatives, even when organizations possess strong mission alignment and technical expertise. The framework shifts attention toward institutional conditions that enable or inhibit sustained environmental resilience efforts.
Suggested citation
Hanson, D. J. (2026). Institutional resilience policy model for resource-constrained environmental organizations. Wildfire Resilient Landscapes Institute.
Urban Tree Renewal for Resilience (UTRR)
Urban Tree Renewal for Resilience (UTRR) proposes a coordinated approach to managing aging and declining urban canopy systems as long-term environmental infrastructure. Rather than focusing solely on tree planting, the framework emphasizes the integrated processes of assessment, removal, replacement, and stewardship necessary to maintain canopy systems over time. By situating canopy renewal within broader systems of governance, public health, and climate adaptation, UTRR reframes urban forestry as a core component of landscape resilience policy.
Suggested citation
Hanson, D. J. (2026). Urban tree renewal for resilience: A systems framework for California. Wildfire Resilient Landscapes Institute.
