Using landscape ecology and climate adaptation principles to develop wildfire and climate-change-resilient landscapes

Project Description

The forests of eastern Washington are naturally fire-prone; they evolved under highly dynamic conditions that created highly variable vegetation and habitat patterns over space and time. Interactions among the climate, biota, environments, and disturbances produced the emergent range of conditions. These conditions supported the native plants and animals, and the processes that sustained them. Today, these more sustainable conditions have been rendered dysfunctional for a variety of species, which are now listed under the Endangered Species Act. Moreover, the frequent large disturbances that are now likely preclude the permanence of some of the most desirable habitat conditions that are the object of land management and reserve strategies. For example, the OWNF has been managing for the recovery of the northern spotted owl (NSO) through a reserve system. This system has been slowly unraveling because of uncharacteristic large fires that destroy habitat faster than it can grow, along with barred owl invasion of prime NSO nesting, roosting, and foraging habitats. These disturbances will continue to redefine and reshape the composition and structure of terrestrial habitats of eastern Washington landscapes. In fact, the currently warming climate is amplifying these conditions, and there is broad recognition that future disturbances will have larger and more severe impacts. Active management with a large toolkit is appropriate, matching the right tools to the right places at the right time. Managing large landscape conditions to be more resilient to wildfire and a changing climate, using successional and habitat patterns that support the inherent disturbance regimes, would increase the likelihood that future fires would be more characteristic, and would help to shape a landscape that includes desired habitat features and is more resilient to disturbances and climate-induced changes.

Purpose and Scope

This project has been pioneered on the OWNF in eastern Washington, but has relevance to all lands within the interior Columbia River basin. The products and knowledge are being shared among multiple forests, other state and federal agencies, and nongovernmental organization collaborators.

Methods

This project has been an ongoing collaboration to manage for more resilient landscapes. To achieve this goal, we have developed a decision support modeling tool (DST) to address many landscape features, at multiple scales, across entire subwatersheds. To achieve these conditions, we analyze the following topics across large present-day landscapes, and their relationship to the historical range of conditions:

1. Patterns of vegetation structure and composition.
2. Potential for spread of large wildfires, insect outbreaks, and disease pandemics across stands and landscapes, given local weather, existing fuel, and host conditions.
3. Damaging interactions between road, trail, and stream networks.
4. Wildlife habitat networking and sustainability.
5. Minimum roads analysis (the minimum road system that sustains administrative and recreational access).

The analysis that we use is based on the Ecosystem Management Decision Support software (developed by PNW Research) and has the objectives to:

• Transparently display how projects move landscapes towards drought-, wildfire,- insect-, and climate-resilient conditions;
• Describe and spatially allocate desired ecological outcomes (e.g., adequate habitat networks for focal wildlife species; disturbance regimes consistent with major vegetation types) regardless of ownership;
• Logically identify project areas, treatment areas, and the associated rationale;
• Spatially allocate through landscape prescriptions the desired ecological outcomes and estimated outputs/byproducts from implemented projects

Key Findings

This work is providing tools, data, and concepts that allow managers to restore landscapes to resilient conditions that are consistent with the best available science. Multiple partners have applied and shared in this work across ownerships and landscapes, and the results have been transparent decision aking that incorporates an ecologically sound knowledge of system dynamics and of how intentional treatments can be used to augment landscape recovery.