Weather plays an integral role in fire management due to the direct and indirect effects it has on fire behavior. However, fire managers may not use all information available to them during the decision-making process, instead utilizing simplifying decision rules called heuristics, i.e. mental "shortcuts." These shortcuts can be adaptive and enable fast and efficient decision-making, or they can introduce systematic bias.

This talk explores how decision strategies influence how fire managers interpret and use short-term weather forecasts. The results have implications for the design of decision support tools developed to support fire managemen