Integrated Landscape Assessment Program (ILAP)

External Tool Authors: Institute for Natural Resources, Oregon State University

Description

The Integrated Landscape Assessment Program (ILAP) produces consistent, integrated data and models to assess possible changes in vegetation, habitat, and economic conditions under different management scenarios over large landscapes. ILAP models and data are used by land managers, planners, and analysts from public agencies, private industries, tribes, NGOs, collaborative groups, and others working at landscape-levels.

ILAP offers a way to help people understand and visualize the long-term consequence of various management approaches across large landscapes. Projections of vegetation, habitat, fuel, and economic conditions from ILAP can help people to select the management actions that come closest to achieving landscape-level objectives, such as reductions in forest and rangelands burned, restored old forest conditions, or the long-term sustainability of existing mills or proposed biomass facilities.

Resource managers and policy makers are increasingly trying to collaborate across boundaries to achieve broad landscape goals. These efforts require an understanding of how alternative management approaches might interact with natural disturbances and other drivers to accomplish landscape restoration. ILAP utilizes state & transition models to produce information, maps, and models to help land managers, policymakers, and others conduct mid- to broad-scale (e.g., watersheds to states and larger areas) prioritization of land management actions, perform landscape assessments, and estimate cumulative effects of management actions for planning and other purposes.

Purpose and Scope

ILAP can develop, integrate, and improve access to comprehensive data, tools, methods, and expertise to support natural resource decision making, research, and education.

Use

Mid to broad scale assessments and support of project level landscape planning.