Integrating Land Cover Modeling and Adaptive Management to Conserve Endangered Species and Reduce Catastrophic Fire Risk

Abstract

Land cover modeling is used to inform land management, but most often via a two-step process, where science informs how management alternatives can influence resources, and then, decision makers can use this information to make decisions. A more efficient process is to directly integrate science and decision-making, where science allows us to learn in order to better accomplish management objectives and is developed to address specific decisions. Co-development of management and science is especially productive when decisions are complicated by multiple objectives and impeded by uncertainty. Multiple objectives can be met by the specification of tradeoffs, and relevant uncertainty can be addressed through targeted science (i.e., models and monitoring). We describe how to integrate habitat and fuel monitoring with decision-making focused on the dual objectives of managing for endangered species and minimizing catastrophic fire risk. Under certain conditions, both objectives might be achieved by a similar management policy; other conditions require tradeoffs between objectives. Knowledge about system responses to actions can be informed by developing hypotheses based on ideas about fire OPEN ACCESSLand 2014, 3 875 behavior and then applying competing management actions to different land units in the same system state. Monitoring and management integration is important to optimize state-specific management decisions and to increase knowledge about system responses. We believe this approach has broad utility and identifies a clear role for land cover modeling programs intended to inform decision-making.

The effects of vegetative type, edges, fire history, rainfall, and management in fire‐maintained habitat

“…We believe optimal habitat management might be better at reducing catastrophic fire risk than fuel management in priority areas (Breininger et al. ). In an optimal habitat management strategy, prescribed fires would be initiated sooner than a fuel reduction strategy by attempting prescribed fires before all fuels are likely to ignite, thus creating transitory openings and heterogeneity among shrub patches at the territory scale.…”

“…Funding for prescribed fires often focuses on maximizing fuel reduction allowing fuels to accumulate until fires can burn them extensively, causing potential Florida scrub-jay territories to have a large sink (short, tall)-to-source (medium) habitat ratio, as occurred herein. We believe optimal habitat management might be better at reducing catastrophic fire risk than fuel management in priority areas (Breininger et al 2014a). In an optimal habitat management strategy, prescribed fires would be initiated sooner than a fuel reduction strategy by attempting prescribed fires before all fuels are likely to ignite, thus creating transitory openings and heterogeneity among shrub patches at the territory scale.…”

State-Dependent Resource Harvesting with Lagged Information about System States

“…As described in detail elsewhere [ 13 , 48 , 49 ], the management process consists of actions a t chosen at each time t from a set of options that are available at that time. A policy A prescribes actions to be taken at time t , so a t = A ( x t ).…”

Resolving future fire management conflicts using multicriteria decision making

“…; Breininger et al. ). Other studies aimed to identify priority areas for fire treatment (Reynolds & Hessburg ), and only 2 evaluated fire management scenarios based on multiple objectives and treatment costs (Ohlson et al.…”

“…However, these advanced techniques are underutilized for resolving complex multiple-objective decisions related to fire management. Of the few studies that have applied decision theory to fire management, most examined one or two fire management objectives including combinations of biodiversity conservation, risk, or cost (Richards et al 1999;McCarthy et al 2001;Kennedy et al 2008;Ager et al 2010;Johnson et al 2011;Breininger et al 2014). Other studies aimed to identify priority areas for fire treatment (Reynolds & Hessburg 2005), and only 2 evaluated fire management scenarios based on multiple objectives and treatment costs (Ohlson et al 2006;Shang et al 2011).…”