Programmatic analysis of fuel treatments: Landscape to national level

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The importance of cost effective fuel treatment programs has appeared consistently in federal directives (FLAME ACT, National Cohesive Strategy, U.S Department of Interior Office of Policy Analysis) as a priority. Implementing cost effective fuel treatment programs requires a spatially explicit and integrated systematic approach that can be applied to the landscape, program and national scale. The objectives of this study were three-fold. The first objective was to generate cost effective fuel treatment programs at the landscape scale and their impact on the preparedness program. The second objective was to quantify the interrelationship between the fuel program and preparedness program by budget alternative at a landscape scale to provide mangers with the fuel and preparedness budgets that achieve the highest return on investment for any combination of budgets. The third objective was to form cost effective national and regional fuel treatment programs based on the data collected from the landscape analysis that considers national and regional policies.