Improved decision support for allocating landscape scale targeted grazing for reducing wildfire risk
The Wildfire Crisis Strategy (WCS) Implementation Plan calls for an unprecedented increase in fuels and forest health treatments across all lands with a focus on the western United States. Targeted grazing is underused relative to other types of treatments for several reasons, including administrative and managerial constraints, so using livestock to control the spread and abundance of fine fuels from invasives has been very limited. With newer technologies such as cutting-edge remote sensing tools and virtual fencing we can determine where targeted grazing opportunities exist as a potential tool for managing fine fuels. But we do not yet have a decision support system that offers near term projections of fine fuels automatically linked to estimates of treatment levels that are both efficacious and durable.
During this project, our partners will assist in accomplishing our objectives through automated fuel mapping, identifying invasive species on the landscape, creating the viewing tool, automating the risk reduction estimators and modelling the probability of exceeding fuel thresholds necessary for propagation of large wildfires. Here we bring together of these ideas in one system which will enhance managers’ and policy makers’ situational awareness and become a starting point for more studies aimed at prioritizing landscape scale treatments to reduce risk. Such a system will provide greater clarity on expected capital outlays for treatments in a prioritized manner in the spirit of adaptive management.
People
-
Person
Matt C. Reeves
Research Ecologist -
Forest Service Region 2
Dwayne Rice
Range Program Leader