Treesearch

Since emerging in the late 1980s, the paradigm of High Reliability Organizing (HRO) has sought to describe how and why certain organizations consistently function safely under hazardous conditions. Researchers have explored a variety of industrial situations, from the early observations of nuclear aircraft carrier operations to nursing units and even high-tech IPOs. The bulk of this research has been descriptive rather than comparative or predictive. Still, or perhaps because of this, there has been a robust and enriching academic discussion through which the paradigm has been refined and...

When unexpected outcomes occur in wildland fire, reports from incident reviews carry a symbolic value beyond the factual information they contain. Popular perception of incident reviews is that the organization has identified the root cause with an eye toward system change, and that the final report chronicles "the" final, definitive, and authoritative version of events. However, participant comments from a series of dialogue sessions on Learning from Escaped Prescribed Reviews reveal that authors, subjects and readers of reports engage in a much more complex process of audience analysis...

Policymakers and decisionmakers alike have suggested that the use of less aggressive suppression strategies for wildland fires might help stem the tide of rising emergency wildland fire expenditures. However, the interplay of wildland fire management decisions and expenditures is not well understood. In this study, we assess the effect of different fire management objectives and strategies on expenditures. Analyses of 1,330 US Forest Service and US Department of Interior fires from fiscal years (FYs) 2006-2008 indicate that management objectives and strategies do affect costs, but the...

The US wildland fire community has been interested in cultivating organizational learning to improve safety and overall performance for a number of years. A key focus has been on understanding the difference between culpability (to be guilty) and accountability (to explain) and on re-orienting review processes towards building a collective account of (as opposed to finding individual blame for) unwanted outcomes. A variety of innovative methodologies have been developed, yet until this project, there has been no systematic reflection to determine whether or how any of the existing review...

In 2011, we held five 2-day workshops at various locations around the US as part of a Joint Fire Science Program project to understand 'learning from escaped prescribed fire reviews'. Each workshop drew an interagency audience with representation from all facets of fire management, from ground personnel to local line officers, regional, and national positions. Over the course of these 10 days of discussion, we developed a rich dataset and conceptual models to describe the existing and potential learning cycle in wildland fire.

For some time now, the wildland fire community has been interested in 'organizational learning' as a way to improve safety and overall performance. For instance, in the US, federal agencies have established and continue to support the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, sponsored several national conferences and are currently considering how incident reviews might be used to further organizational learning. To assist in this effort, we embarked on a Joint Fire Science Program-sponsored research project, to understand what organizational learning - even simply 'learning' - looks like...

This paper focuses on the nexus among native and nonnative fishes with respect to fire and climate change in the western United States. Although many taxa are involved, I emphasize native and nonnative salmonids because these are obligate coldwater species that might be expected to respond strongly to fire and because most research has been conducted on these fishes. Also, forested lands in federal ownership in the western United States represent the stronghold for many native coldwater taxa and are the subject of fire, fuels, and water management. I caution, however, that climate change,...

Fire will play an important role in shaping forest and stream ecosystems as the climate changes. Historic observations show increased dryness accompanying more widespread fire and forest die-off. These events punctuate gradual changes to ecosystems and sometimes generate stepwise changes in ecosystems. Climate vulnerability assessments need to account for fire in their calculus. The biophysical template of forest and stream ecosystems determines much of their response to fire. This report describes the framework of how fire and climate change work together to affect forest and fish...

The effects of wildfire on aquatic systems and fishes occurring in them has been linked to the direct or immediate influence of the fire on water quality and the indirect or subsequent effects on watershed characteristics and processes that influence water quality and quantity, stream channels, and aquatic biota (Gresswell 1999). Early research linking fire and aquatic systems focused on effects to soil, erosion, and water yield and quality, with a relatively limited temporal and spatial context (see Gresswell 1999 for a review). Wildfire generally was perceived as a destructive force...

Salmonid fishes have evolved and persisted in dynamic ecosystems (Waples and others 2008) where disturbance events vary in frequency, magnitude, timing, and duration (Gresswell 1999; Dale and others 2001), as well as the specific nature of associated effects (e.g., changes in thermal or flow regimes, geomorphology, or water chemistry; Reeves and others 1995; Benda and others 2004; Bisson and others 2005). In the western United States, one of the major drivers of disturbance in stream ecosystems is fire (Reeves and others 1995; Rieman and Clayton 1997; Gresswell 1999). Although there is a...