Prescribed Fire

The postmodern world is still struggling to blossom and flower. Organizations and their leaders often seem to be locked into Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic worldviews, first wave behaviorism, and positivism. The theory and practice of servant-leadership, resilient leadership and adaptive leadership informed by psychology provide a way to address increasing levels of complexity in a postmodern world. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce is perhaps the greatest exemplar of servant-leadership in American history. The essential characteristics of resilient leadership are captured in the story of the battle of the Big Hole in the Nez Perce War of 1877. Adaptive work entails a change in values, beliefs, or behavior and requires diagnosis and action. As part of the diagnostic process, a model of human performance focused on resilience and adaptation is presented. Prescribed burning offers a practice field for developing adaptive and resilient leaders. Leadership is responsible for creating an engaging climate conducive to the growth and development of their people; the key ingredient to high performance. While improving policy, planning, and risk management are all necessary, perhaps the most important actions are emphasizing and devoting more resources to reflection, learning to develop expertise; and taking care of people. While we need to develop the capability to learn from all unexpected outcomes (the good, bad, ugly, and near miss), how we deal with tragedy is critical. Compassion is the cornerstone. The basic premise of this paper is that leadership is forged through experience (trial by fire), particularly experience responding to traumatic events.

Old growth in the frequent-fire conifer forests of the western United States, such as those containing ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), Jeffrey pine ( P. jeffreyi), giant sequoia (Sequioa giganteum) and other species, has undergone major changes since Euro-American settlement. Understanding past changes and anticipating future changes under different potential management scenarios are fundamental to developing ecologically based fuel reduction or

Frequent wildfire disasters in southern California highlight the need for risk reduction strategies for the region, of which fuel reduction via prescribed burning is one option. However, there is no consensus about the effectiveness of prescribed fire in reducing the area of wildfire. Here, we use 29 years of historical fire mapping to quantify the relationship between annual wildfire area and antecedent fire area in predominantly shrub and grassland fuels in seven southern California counties, controlling for annual variation in weather patterns. This method has been used elsewhere to measure leverage: the reduction in wildfire area resulting from one unit of prescribed fire treatment. We found little evidence for a leverage effect (leverage = zero). Specifically our results showed no evidence that wildfire area was negatively influenced by previous fires, and only weak relationships with weather variables rainfall and Santa Ana wind occurrences, which were variables included to co...

While recognized as globally as an iconic natural landscape and the centerpiece of a pioneering national park, Yosemite Valley is in truth a landscape cultivated by generations of Native caretakers. The Native peoples of Yosemite Valley – including Southern Sierra Miwok linked to tribal communities of the western Sierra Nevada slope and Mono Lake Paiute linked to the deserts to the east – have actively shaped this landscape in myriad ways. Prior to Euro-American resettlement, seasonal, patterned burning transformed the plant communities of the entire valley, sustaining open meadows and California Black oak (Quercus kelloggii) groves in places that would otherwise been overgrown in subalpine conifer forests. This burning, plus other types of active management – selective harvesting, pruning, replanting, and many other techniques – produced anthropogenic plant communities that are distinctive and long sustained the food, material, medicinal and spiritual needs of Yosemite Valley’s Native residents.  Fire suppression and the forced removal of Native people from the valley undermined not only these human communities, but the biotic communities they had sustained; the advent of tourism and park management activities such as fire suppression and river dredging only compounded these effects. Today, certain keystone plant communities persist in diminished form on the landscape, such as Black oak groves, in spite of a century and a half of dramatic change. Such anthropogenic landscapes remain a potent locus of cultural meaning to modern tribes, and also a focal point of ongoing National Park Service efforts to sustain these unique landscapes – managed with a growing recognition of not only their biological value, but their role as keystone cultural landscapes. This chapter assesses these interconnected historical, cultural, and biological developments with special attention to the specific mechanisms used by Native American managers of the landscape, and the ways that they served to enhance the availability of culturally preferred plant communities; the chapter also addresses the research methods used to document traditional resource management practices, and to incorporate those practices into modern land and resource management planning for Yosemite Valley.

Little is known about the effects that oak forest regeneration treatments consisting of a combination of shelterwood harvesting and prescribed fire have on bats, despite increasing use of these treatments. We quantified changes in bat activity levels in relation to oak forest regeneration treatments consisting of harvesting at 50% and 70% retention levels and prescribed fire in two upland Appalachian hardwood forests in Ohio. We monitored bat activity immediately post-harvest, three growing seasons post-harvest, and after application of prescribed fire to harvested stands before the fourth growing season. Total bat activity levels were higher in thinned and thinned and burned treatments than in unthinned controls in all years, but did not differ between harvest treatment levels immediately post-harvest, three growing seasons post-harvest, or between harvest treatment levels within years. Total bat activity post-prescribed fire changed only in the 50% retention harvest treatment blocks, wherein activity decreased. Activity levels of big brown (Eptesicus fuscus) bats were greater in harvested treatment blocks than controls in all years. Activity levels of eastern red (Lasiurus borealis), and Myotis spp. and tri-colored (Perimyotis subflavus) collectively did not differ among treatment blocks post-fire, but were greater in harvested treatment blocks than controls three growing seasons post-harvest. Community composition was strongly related to vegetation volume, with eastern red bats and Myotis and tri-colored bats displaying positive relationships with clutter in low height strata, and big brown bats displaying a negative relationship with clutter in all height strata. The positive relationship between eastern red and Myotis and tri-colored bats and clutter in low height strata may explain why activity levels of these species decreased post-prescribed fire. Our study suggests that the harvesting component of oak forest regeneration treatments may benefit bats for several years, and that while bat activity levels may decline post-prescribed fire, overall activity levels are nonetheless greater than in unthinned areas.

How do we organize for high performance in a setting where the potential for error and disaster can be overwhelming? In doing so, how can we best apply the High Reliability Organizing concepts into the prescribed fire and fire use arenas? And, to successfully achieve these outcomes, how can we personally and institutionally overcome our immunity to change?
This report summarizes how these questions—and many others—were addressed through the activities, discussions, and lessons learned during the four-day Managing the Unexpected Workshop held May 10-13 2004, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The report documents and examines the day-to-day workshop chronology from its opening keynote address and “Managing the Unexpected” presentation, through the all-day Staff Ride to the 2000 Cerro Grande Prescribed Fire site, the Staff Ride’s Integration Phase, and the final day’s thought provoking and challenging “Immunity to Change” exercise.
Overall workshop intent was to introduce the latest social science to the prescribed fire and fire use management community.
Noted organizational psychologists Dr. Karl E. Weick, the Rensis Likert Distinguished University Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology, and Dr. Kathleen Sutcliffe, of the University of Michigan Business School, were the workshop’s featured presenters. Authors of Managing the Unexpected – Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity, they participated in the entire four-day workshop “clarifying ideas, answering questions, and learning,” notes Dr. Weick.
In addition, the Harvard University Graduate School’s organizational psychologists Dr. Robert Kegan, William and Miriam Meehan Professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development, and Dr. Lisa Lahey, Research Director of the Change Leadership Group, were also featured presenters. Authors of The Real Reason People Won’t Change, they introduced workshop participants to their psychologically dynamic Immunity to Change exercise. Twenty workshop participants participated with Kegan and Lahey in a three-month “coaching process” followup.
The workshop was hosted by: The USDA Forest Service; USDI National Park Service; Rocky Mountain Research Station; Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center; Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory; National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Social Science Task Group; The Nature Conservancy; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.