Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team

Decision Support for Management Identification of Best Forest Treatments for Lifecycle Carbon Offsets, Fire Reduction, and Avoiding Future Costs

This project will demonstrate application of the Landscape Management System (LMS), a site- and landscape-specific tree-list-based decision support tool for selecting forest management action priorities in the West that best mitigate carbon emissions while reducing fire risk and future costs. Carbon accounting will be upgraded by directly including carbon offset effects of using forest residuals for biofuels, linking the Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) fuel loading mapped at landscape scales to tree information used for stand-level treatment decisions to better identify fire reduction priorities, and incorporating fire consumption models to improve estimates of the carbon consumed (emitted) by wildfires. Utility of the tool will be demonstrated and evaluated on Stewardship planning units in the Lakeview Federal Stewardship Unit (Fremont-Winema National Forests).

The tool will also be used to evaluate the impacts of treatment alternatives across a range of representative forest types on public and private forest lands. Predominant forest types, conditions, and management alternatives will be identified in collaboration with U.S. Forest Service, Washington Office Forest Management; and National Forest manager,s as well as demonstration-site collaborators. The tool will also be used to evaluate the potential for siting liquid biofuels plants to use biomass identified in treatment alternatives.

To extend the educational benefits to policy makers and other operators, we will conduct a training session and prepare an interactive streaming video characterizing the impacts of treatment alternatives across a range of forest types on public and private forest lands for demonstration and distance education. The tools and methods will be available by web access or CD.

FERA's participation in this collaborative project will be to provide advice and assistance on forest classification systems, fire modeling and fire management (Morris Johnson) and develop the spatial application of the fuels and consumption models (Don McKenzie).

This research project will begin in May 2008, and is expected to be complete in June 2011.

Project Leads: Don McKenzie and Morris Johnson

Collaborators: Kenneth Skog (Forest Products Laboratory); Bruce Lippke, Jim McCarter, Elaine O'Neil, Larry Mason, Matthew McLaughlin (University of Washington); Karen Shimamoto (Fremont and Winmena National Forests); and Jim Walls (Lakeview County Resources Initiative)

U.S. Forest Service - PNW- FERA
Last Modified: Friday, 24 February 2012 at 18:04:51 EST