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The
increase in fuel treatment investments that follow the 2000 fire
season need to be cost-effective with acceptable impacts on resource
values. The issues facing land managers are enormous and the
tasks overwhelming when one considers the large number of acres
with fuel buildups, the budgets needed to treat all those acres,
and resource and environmental issues. Two complementary modeling
systems, MAGIS
(Multi-resource Analysis and Geographic Information System) and
SIMPPLLE (Simulating Vegetative Patterns and processes at Landscape
Scales), are being developed and linked to quantify trade-off costs
associated with fuel treatments within the context of dynamic landscapes.
MAGIS is designed to spatially schedule treatments that effectively
meet resource and management objectives and compute trade-offs associated
with those treatment schedules. SIMPPLLE is a spatially explicit,
stochastic system that simulates disturbance processes with and
without management treatments. The combination of these two
models provides a powerful analytical methodology for: 1) analyzing
the extent and likely location of disturbance processes (such as
fire) both in the presence and absence of treatments, 2) developing
spatial and temporal treatment alternatives for addressing fuels
treatment along with other resource objectives, and 3) evaluating
those alternatives in a manner that captures the combined effects
of treatments and disturbances processes. This research provides
the additional development and testing needed for both systems to
reach their combined potential as a truly effective decision support
system for spatially analyzing fuel treatment alternatives.
This includes: a) testing response relationships, b) developing
processes for quickly moving information between the systems, and
c) developing GIS interfaces. MAGIS and SIMPPLLE will be integrated
into a fully-functioning decision support system during FY 2003.
Links
to MAGIS and SIMPPLLE
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