Landscape Evaluation for Restoration Planning on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, USA

Paul Hessburg, Keith Reynolds, R. Salter, James Dickinson, William Gaines, Richy Harrod
2013 Sustainability  
Land managers in the western US are beginning to understand that early 20th century forests displayed complex patterns of composition and structure at several different spatial scales, that there was interplay between patterns and processes within and across scales, and that these conditions have been radically altered by management. Further, they know that restoring integrity (see Definition of Terms) of these conditions has broad implications for the future sustainability (see Definition of
more » ... rms) of native species, ecosystem services, and ecological processes. Many are looking for methods to restore (see Definition of Terms) more natural landscape patterns of habitats and more naturally functioning disturbance regimes; all in the context of a warming climate. Attention is turning to evaluating whole landscapes at local and regional scales, deciphering recent changes in trajectories, and formulating landscape prescriptions that can restore ecological functionality and improve landscape resilience (see Definition of Terms). The business of landscape evaluation and developing landscape prescriptions is inherently complex, but with the advent of decision support systems, software applications are now available to conduct and document these evaluations. Here, we review several published landscape evaluation and planning applications designed with the Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) software, and present an evaluation we developed in support of a OPEN ACCESS It also increased sighting distances in the event of sneak-attacks by marauding tribes, and improved forage for wild ungulates, which enhanced hunting both near and away from encampments. Burning along major travel routes improved food supplies and increased ease and safety of travel, but it lacked direct spatial controls on burned area or fire effects, and burns often travelled further and killed more forest than intended. Nonetheless, Native Americans were the first fire managers, and their use of intentionally lighted fires greatly aided their culture and lifestyle. In the mid-19th century, settlement and management of the Great Plains, and the Pacific, Rocky Mountain, and Intermountain West by Euro-American settlers greatly accelerated with the discovery of lush and productive prairies on the plains and in the intermountain valleys, rich gold and silver ore deposits, and abundant acres for homesteading [1,3,6-10]. With settlement, came land clearing and expansion of agriculture, timber harvesting, and early attempts at wildfire suppression, which were highly effective after the 10 a.m. rule was enacted as federal policy between 1934 and 1935 [1,11]. This policy of suppression, by 10 a.m. of the next burn period after detection, forever changed the role of wildfire, especially as it applied to primeval western landscapes. The rule was formally removed in the early 1970s, but aggressive wildfire suppression is still practiced. Natural variability in wildfire frequency, duration, severity, seasonality, and extent were unavoidably transformed by decades of fire exclusion and wildfire suppression, and broadly popularized fire prevention campaigns. Wildfire exclusion by cattle grazing, road and rail construction, wildfire prevention and suppression policies, and industrial-strength selective logging, beginning in the 1930s and continuing for more than 50 years, contributed not only to extensive alteration of natural wildfire regimes, but also to forest insect and pathogen disturbance regimes, causing them to shift significantly from historical analogues. For example, the duration, severity, and extent of conifer defoliator and bark beetle outbreaks increased substantially [12] , becoming more chronic and devastating to timber and habitat resources [13] . Selective logging accelerated steadily during and after the Second World War. Fire exclusion and selective logging advanced the seral status and reduced fire tolerance of affected forests with the removal of large, thick-barked, old trees of the most fire tolerant species [9] . It increased the density and layering of the forests that remained because selection cutting favored regeneration and release of shade-tolerant and fire-intolerant tree species such as Douglas-fir, grand fir, and white fir [14] . Recent warming and drying of the western U.S. climate has greatly exacerbated these changes [15] [16] [17] . Changes from pre-settlement era variability of structural and compositional conditions affected regional landscapes as well. Prior to the era of management, regional landscape resilience to wildfires naturally derived from mosaics of previously burned and recovering vegetation patches from prior wildfire events, and a predictable distribution of prior fire event sizes [18] . This resilience yielded a finite and semi-predictable array of pattern conditions [19] [20] [21] [22] that supported other ecological processes, at several scales of observation. As a result of these many changes, US land managers face substantial societal and scientific pressure to improve habitat conditions and viability of native species, and the food webs that support them. Because alternatives to managing for historical analogue or related conditions are as yet untested [23, 24] , public land managers have been required to restore a semblance of the natural abundance and spatial variability of habitats. This has been reinforced by endangered species and environmental laws, but such an approach is incomplete in a rapidly warming climate.
doi:10.3390/su5030805 fatcat:wr5f3htrkrhcdfoqibhppi3klq