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Project ID: 04-2-1-27

Year: 2004

Date Started: 04/29/2004

Date Completed: 05/09/2007

Title: Multi-Jurisdictional Application of Forest ERA Landscape Decision Support Tools in North-Central New Mexico

Project Proposal Abstract: North-central New Mexico forests and woodlands managed by the Taos Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are intermixed with lands in more than a dozen other federal, state, tribal and local jurisdictions. The agencies include two National Forests, state trust lands, four counties, three municipalities, a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) district, seven tribal nations, and six quasi-public Land Grant entities. Science-based planning and implementation of fuels reduction treatments in this multi-jurisdictional landscape requires new data and analytical tools capable of addressing the ecological and social complexity in this region. The agencies and municipalities charged with managing the forests and communities in northcentral New Mexico are extremely concerned about destructive wildfire due to the increasing frequency and severity of high-intensity crown fire in the Southwest. Each entity has its own fire and forest management objectives, which range from protecting human life and property to restoring altered fire regimes and degraded forest conditions. Landscape-scale scientific data to inform joint agency planning has been nearly impossible to create because of widespread differences in the existing data and analytical capabilities of the more than one dozen agencies. The Forest Ecosystem Restoration Analysis (ForestERA) Project is a set of GIS-based tools developed at Northern Arizona University (NAU). These tools greatly increase land managers' abilities to use scientific information to strategically plan and prioritize fuel reduction and restoration treatments at landscape and regional scales in a rigorous, transparent, and collaborative fashion. The data and analytical tools allow local land managers to assess current conditions, explore the likely impacts and implications of different forest management scenarios, and choose treatment plans that are science-based, socially acceptable, and feasible from a management perspective. These tools can also be used to conduct cumulative effects analysis and to monitor the effects of treatments within an adaptive management context. The agencies involved in forest and fire planning in north-central New Mexico have formed a collaborative to develop landscape-scale data and to conduct a multi-jurisdictional scientific analysis of wildfire risks and treatment alternatives and priorities. The proposed project will accomplish the objectives of Joint Fire Sciences Program AFP 2004-2, task one, by directly addressing locally important knowledge and data gaps that will provide a common scientific foundation for working together to strategically plan, prioritize and collaborate on fuels reduction and restoration treatments. This application of ForestERA will address the specific objectives and information needs of the project partners and sponsors, develop locally specific data, synthesize the data using innovative spatial analytical techniques, and provide a diversity of planning tools in a "seamless" manner that is powerful, yet transparent, flexible, and reasonably user-friendly. The scientific toolbox that is developed will be linked to a planning process that empowers the local managers to use the science in a helpful and responsible manner.

Principal Investigator: Thomas D. Sisk

Agency/Organization: Northern Arizona University

Branch or Dept: School of Earth Sciences & Environmental Sustainability

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Federal Cooperator	Sam DesGeorges	BLM-Bureau of Land Management	Taos Field Office

Project Locations

Consortium

Southwest

There are no project locations identified for this project.

Project Deliverables

Final Report ("Results presented in JFSP Final Reports may not have been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as tentative until published in a peer-reviewed source.")

There are no deliverables available for this project.

Supporting Documents

There are no supporting documents available for this project.

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