In contrast to traditional structures of state-centric bureaucratic administration, hybrid networks of state and non-state actors are believed to possess the advantages of greater adaptability in the face of environmental change as well as greater legitimacy in contested socio-political settings. Between 1998 and 2016, pine forests throughout the western United States experienced the largest and most destructive outbreak of the native mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) on record, with most of the affected forests located on lands owned and managed by the U.S. government as national forests. Socio-political responses to this event in many geographies included the emergence of local to regional hybrid networks that provided direction and resources for responding to the disturbance event. In this study, we analyze the ability of governance networks to adapt in the face of the insect outbreak across four regional geographies: The Black Hills region of South Dakota and Wyoming; northern Colorado; northeastern Washington; and southwestern Montana. Specifically, we ask what factors accounted for divergent governance responses in the four cases and to what extent the emergent governance dynamics in each case facilitated lasting, long-term adaptation. Our results highlight governance trajectories as products of their respective histories and of feedback cycles among socio-political, institutional, and technological variables. By analyzing the origin, characteristics, and persistence of institutional change, this research contributes a comparative perspective on the adaptive potential of networks as functions of influences from multiple spatial and temporal scales.

与以国家为中心的官僚行政的传统结构相比，国家和非国家行为者的混合网络被认为具有面对环境变化时更大的适应性以及在有争议的社会政治环境中更大的合法性的优势。在1998年至2016年之间，美国西部的松树林经历了原生山松甲虫（Dendroctonus），大多数受影响的森林都位于美国政府拥有和管理的土地上，作为国家森林。在许多地区，对此事件的社会政治反应包括出现了本地到区域的混合网络，这些网络为应对干扰事件提供了方向和资源。在这项研究中，我们分析了治理网络适应以下四个地区的昆虫暴发的能力：南达科他州的布莱克希尔斯地区和怀俄明州；科罗拉多北部；华盛顿东北；和蒙大拿州西南部。具体而言，我们询问在四种情况下哪些因素导致了不同的治理响应，每种情况下出现的治理动态在多大程度上促进了持久的长期适应。我们的研究结果强调了治理轨迹是它们各自历史的产物，也是社会政治，制度和技术变量之间的反馈周期的产物。通过分析制度变迁的起源，特征和持续性，本研究为网络的适应潜力提供了比较视角，这些潜力是来自多个时空尺度的影响函数。