Decision Support
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This study provide several recent examples related to landscape monitoring, restoration, reclamation, and conservation in which landscape science products were developed specifically to support decision-making. The paper highlights three actions—elevating the importance of science-management partnerships dedicated to coproducing actionable landscape science products, identifying where landscape science could foster efficiencies in the land-use planning process, and developing scenario-based landscape models for shrublands—that could improve landscape science support for public land planners and managers.
Learn more and access ST-Sim tool
Using computer-aided modeling, land management teams can use ST-Sim to document or justify management actions in forthcoming forest plans and NEPA documentation. ST-Sim allows managers to ask landscape-wide “what-if” questions based on different management regimes and land treatments while estimating interactions with expected climate changes. With this tool, the scientists are able to provide land managers with worst-case and best-case scenarios under different conditions.
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This study presents a novel risk-science approach that aligns wildfire response decisions, mitigation opportunities, and land management objectives by consciously integrating social, ecological and fire management system needs. We use fire-prone landscapes of the US Pacific Northwest as our study area, and report on and describe how three complementary risk-based analytic tools—quantitative wildfire risk assessment, mapping of suppression difficulty, and atlases of potential control locations—can form the foundation for adaptive governance in fire management. Together, these tools integrate wildfire risk with fire management difficulties and opportunities, providing a more complete picture of the wildfire risk management challenge. Leveraging recent and ongoing experience integrating local experiential knowledge with these tools, we provide examples and discuss how these geospatial datasets create a risk-based planning structure that spans multiple spatial scales and uses.
Wildfire is one of the most contentious subjects affecting land managers, land owners, and the public. As a contagious process, the social, political, and ecological ramifications of wildfire response and eventual fire outcomes are not limited to where and when a fire occurs, leaving instead a legacy of effects that can shape the physical and social fabric of a landscape for decades. Fire under the right conditions and in the right locations can restore landscape integrity and help guard against future losses. Fire under the wrong conditions can be catastrophic.
This presentation digs into three years of case studies applying strategic wildfire risk planning, aka “the PODs framework”, to decision support in landscape-scale wildfire planning and during incident-level wildfire response. It discusses successes and failures, challenges of implementation, lessons learned, and current and future applications.
Please visit the UI website for details about dates and timing.
The University of Idaho (UI) offers a variety of online fire and natural resources courses with Great Basin content. These courses and degree programs can help you develop as a professional and succeed in fire and natural resources management. View the list of online courses or certificate and degree programs. Consider taking one or more online courses, a certificate or enroll in a degree program. This is a great option as many professionals are place-bound, face limits on travel budgets, and are challenged to effectively accomplish science-based management on the ground to address pressing needs for management and conservation in Great Basin ecosystems and beyond.
The Fire Ecology, Management and Technology Certificate and the Master of Natural Resources (MNR) degree can be completed entirely online — without ever coming to campus, and at in-state tuition rates for all.
As many professionals are place-bound and face limits on travel, these online training options can help practitioners accomplish science-based management on the ground to address land management challenges in the Great Basin and beyond.
Questions? Contact cnr-grad-studies@uidaho.edu
Visit Colorado State University (CSU) course overview
The online Graduate Certificate in Communications for Conservation at Colorado State University offers conservation practitioners and communicators a holistic program for learning ideas, skills, and tools to communicate and engage with a wide range of public stakeholders, including media and communications specialists, decision-makers and thought leaders, other scientists, and everyday citizens.
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This study specifically surveyed county emergency managers; the individuals who are responsible for mitigating and responding to disaster events. The results suggest that emergency managers are subject to decision biases and by knowing this, we can improve emergency management and decision-making processes.
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We surveyed Forest Service resource managers in the western United States to address this knowledge gap. Respondents engaged most frequently with science via reading research publications; direct engagement with scientists was less common. There was widespread agreement that science was a useful input to decisionmaking. Managers believed more weight should be placed on science in decisionmaking in cases of low public consensus than in cases of high public consensus. Managers with the most frequent engagement with science generally held more positive views towards science and its role in decisionmaking.
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This study surveyed Forest Service resource managers in the western United States to address this knowledge gap. Respondents engaged most frequently with science via reading research publications; direct engagement with scientists was less common. There was widespread agreement that science was a useful input to decisionmaking. Managers believed more weight should be placed on science in decisionmaking in cases of low public consensus than in cases of high public consensus. Managers with the most frequent engagement with science generally held more positive views towards science and its role in decisionmaking.
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This paper (1) provides a review of conditions under which historic reference information is and is not required to meet management and policy objectives, (2) summarizes current approaches to defining the reference for land health and degradation assessments, and (3) presents a protocol, “Describing Indicators of Rangeland Health” (DIRH) for collecting and organizing data that can be used to define a historic reference. This protocol builds on the framework and indicators presented in the “Interpreting Indicators of Rangeland Health” (IIRH). IIRH uses a combination of scientific and local knowledge to generate soil- and climate-specific assessments of three attributes of land health. It is used in a number of countries. In the United States, data are aggregated over 30,000 locations to provide national assessments.