Institute for Resilient Organizations, Communities, and Environments (IROCE)

Permanent URI for this community

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/13125

The Institute for Resilient Organizations, Communities, and Environments (IROCE) at the University of Oregon links, leverages, and aligns applied social science research and resources to help organizations and communities adapt and thrive in the face of adversity.

Note: The organization was formerly known as The Institute for a Sustainable Environment

For more information, visit the web site at: https://resilient.uoregon.edu

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Browsing Institute for Resilient Organizations, Communities, and Environments (IROCE) by Subject "Benchmarking (Management)"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Challenges to developing new socioeconomic performance measures
    (Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2012) Moseley, Cassandra; Davis, Emily Jane; Medley-Daniel, Michelle
    The USDA Forest Service needs performance measures to track the social and economic outcomes of its investments. But there are inherent challenges to developing, adapting, and using new measures in the Forest Service’s accountability system. Measuring socioeconomic outcomes can also be complex. We describe these barriers and suggest possible solutions for developing and integrating new socioeconomic performance measures.
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    Developing socioeconomic performance measures for the Watershed Condition Framework
    (Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2012) Moseley, Cassandra; Davis, Emily Jane
    Across multiple presidential administrations, forest and watershed restoration has become an increasingly important focus of the USDA Forest Service. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, for example, has made restoring watershed and forest health the primary objective of the Forest Service. In FY 2012, Congress initiated an integrated resource restoration (IRR) pilot project to align the Forest Service budget with integrated restoration priorities on a trial basis. To foster watershed restoration, in 2010 the Forest Service introduced the Watershed Condition Framework (WCF) program, a comprehensive approach to planning and implementing integrated projects in priority watersheds. This framework promises to help national forests assess watershed health, prioritize restoration and maintenance activities, and measure their progress towards restoration. Using the WCF, the Forest Service should be able to increase the effectiveness of restoration by being more strategic about where and how it works. The WCF’s focus on outcomes should also help demonstrate the costs and benefits of investments in restoration.
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    Piloting restoration-oriented social and economic performance measures
    (Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2017) Moseley, Cassandra; Huber-Stearns, Heidi
    Forest and watershed restoration on national forests and grasslands has ecological, social, and economic objectives. Forest Service performance measures have largely focused on outputs associated with land treatments, rather than ecological, social, and economic outcomes, in part because outputs are much more easily measured than outcomes. Over the past several years, the Forest Service has undertaken initiatives to develop performance measures that are broader in scope and more outcome-oriented. The Watershed Condition Framework was one such effort for tracking ecological measures related to watershed restoration. This briefing paper summarizes key findings from an effort to pilot social and economic performance measures associated with watershed restoration.
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    Piloting restoration-related social and economic measures on national forests
    (Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2017) Moseley, Cassandra; Huber-Stearns, Heidi
    Forest and watershed restoration on national forests and grasslands has ecological, social, and economic objectives. Forest Service performance measures have largely focused on outputs associated with land treatments, rather than ecological, social, and economic outcomes, in part because outputs are much more easily measured than outcomes. Over the past several years, the Forest Service has undertaken several initiatives to develop performance measures that are broader in scope and more outcome-oriented. This working paper summarizes key findings from an effort to pilot social and economic performance measures associated with watershed restoration.
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    Why create socioeconomic performance measures?
    (Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2012) Moseley, Cassandra; Davis, Emily Jane; Medley-Daniel, Michelle
    In 2010, USDA Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell stated that “building a forest restoration economy will create new jobs in rural communities and help diversify the forest products industry to support the sustainability of local communities.” However, the Forest Service’s performance accountability system lacks measures of the socioeconomic impacts of restoration. We discuss why these measures are necessary to help the Forest Service better document the impacts of restoration.