Kelly Pohl is Associate Director of Headwaters Economics. She works closely with her team to shape program goals and identify opportunities to advance the organization’s mission. Kelly’s policy knowledge and aptitude for strategizing and messaging help Headwaters Economics remain at the forefront of emerging issues.
In her role as Headwaters Economics’ operations lead, Kelly is known for her can-do attitude, her astute use of technology for planning and project tracking, and her foresight regarding workflow resources, bottlenecks, and opportunities. She continually steers the team toward thoughtful action, ensuring that staff members reach their full potential in a positive environment.
Kelly has led the design and development of many of Headwaters Economics’ nationally-recognized research products and tools. With a knack for making complex information visually compelling and actionable, she led the development of the Unequal Impacts of Wildfire tool demonstrating where exposure to wildfire intersects socioeconomic vulnerabilities, and she serves as the U.S. Forest Services’ point of contact for the Wildfire Risk to Communities tool, the first nationwide map of wildfire risk to communities. She has also conducted original research on state funding mechanisms for outdoor recreation and conservation, best practices for recreation in municipal watersheds, and the costs of wildfire-resistant home construction.
Before joining Headwaters, Kelly led community-based finance campaigns for trails and conservation and oversaw the design and construction of multi-million dollar trail projects for a local nonprofit organization. She coordinated public/private partnerships and led dozens of public access and private conservation projects. With a master’s degree in geography, she has also worked as a fire ecologist and a park naturalist. A Montana native, Kelly is intimately familiar with small-town dynamics, strengths, and challenges. She represents Headwaters Economics on topics including wildfire, outdoor recreation, socioeconomic equity, and climate adaptation – not as hypothetical situations, but as they impact real people in real communities. In her spare time, she volunteers as the chair of Bozeman’s Transportation Advisory Board and on the Land Conservation Committee for the local land trust.
Seven case studies illustrate best practices and lessons learned to develop programs for outdoor state recreation funding.
This story map provides Taos County residents with information about the ecological role of fire, the region’s wildfire risk, forest restoration projects, and emergency preparedness.
Minority populations are growing in nearly all rural western counties, helping booming communities expand and slowing the decline in counties that otherwise would have lost people.
How can communities measure and take advantage of the economic impacts of nearby outdoor recreation activities on public lands?
The Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire program works with many communities across the U.S.
New research highlights opportunities to improve wildfire risk models that inform planning, building codes, and risk management.
Federal public lands may offer opportunities to improve housing affordability in a limited number of states, but will face significant barriers from wildfire risk, water availability, and conflicts with existing resource or recreation uses.
New modeling of trail use in Cibola and McKinley counties, New Mexico has identified more than $1.7 million in visitor contributions to the local economy each year.
A new map helps identify communities where investments in staffing and expertise are needed to support infrastructure and climate resilience projects.
In this ten-minute video produced by Headwaters Economics, learn how leaders in Austin, TX came to realize the magnitude of the wildfire threat, and how they brought together diverse interests to protect their community.
Kelly Pohl, who researches climate resilience, housing and land use at Headwaters Economics said that in high-demand places like mountain towns and coastal areas disasters tend to accelerate gentrification.
“There are a lot of cities that share similarities with what happened in Los Angeles,” said Kelly Pohl with Headwaters Economics, a non-profit research group in Montana that had done research on the cost of retrofitting homes to protect against wildfires. Think Boise, Idaho. Salt Lake City.
“A lot of Montanans can do things before a fire starts,” said Kelly Pohl, an the associate director of Headwaters Economics. “We have to realize that wildfire is part of our landscape, so we have to take actions to reduce the likelihood that it will destroy property.”
Wildfires threaten nearly one-third of U.S. residents and buildings, according to a new government analysis that suggests the risk is greater than previously known. The Forest Service, working with Montana researchers, took a new approach to measuring wildfire risk and limited its historical analysis to the 15 years between 2004 and 2018.