Forest Fuel Management

May 1, 2005 By: Judy M. Troutwine

Twentieth-century forest management practices of fire exclusion have caused a build-up of forest fuels that, combined with current weather patterns, threaten the ecological health of the Colorado Front Range. The year 2002 clearly demonstrated the potential for catastrophic wildfire in the area. During that year's fire season, the Hayman fire moved across 138,000 acres of the Pike National Forest, located south and west of Denver. The South Platte River watershed coincides with much of the Pike National Forest, and the urban and suburban populations of Denver — currently in an apparently deteriorating drought situation — are dependent on the South Platte watershed for their water supply. The Hayman and other wildfires in recent history put the forest's health and water quality in jeopardy.

Of course, the Pike National Forest is not alone in being confronted with these difficult circumstances. In recent years, forest health as it affects the occurrence of catastrophic fire has become a well-publicized, central issue for forest-management decisions across the United States. And, although the remedy for the buildup of forest fuels may seem straightforward, forest managers may not have the proper planning tools to effectively remove fuels while adhering to wider principles of ecological multiple-use forest management, responding to public interests, working within budget, and planning transportation. In reducing fuels, several issues must be considered, including minimizing insects and disease, mitigating any sedimentation or smoke produced by forest treatment activities, reducing road density, and managing wildlife habitat. In meeting these objectives several questions must be addressed: Is it possible to determine locations that would most effectively lessen the risk of stand-replacing fire? Are treatments in those locations consistent with other objectives? Can costs be offset by incidental biomass or other utilization?

To aid natural-resource managers in answering these questions and analyzing similar complex management decisions, researchers of the U.S. Forest Service's (USFS's) Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS), located at the Missoula Forestry Sciences Lab, The University of Montana-Missoula (UM), and the USFS Inventory and Monitoring Institute (IMI) at Fort Collins, Colorado, have worked to develop a spatial decision-support system (SDSS) planning tool that combines GIS with modified versions of existing predictive models and optimization methods. Known as MAGIS (Multi-Resource Analysis and Geographic Information System), the tool is a powerful software package that enables natural-resource planners and decision makers to schedule management activities for five user-defined time periods (usually decades) and estimate the ecological and economic consequences of those activities. With MAGIS, planning-area resource models and management scenarios are first defined and then "solved" to optimize resource management and transportation (optional) on both a temporal and geographic basis. Any number of alternative scenarios may be specified by modelers (research staff or resource managers) and results compared.

Origins of an SDSS

RMRS is one of seven research stations of the Research and Development branch of USFS. The RMRS forest economics unit at the Missoula Forestry Services Lab conducts studies in resource valuation and use, serving the public as well as private landowners. The College of Forestry and Conservation at UM is a regional leader in forestry education and research using GIS. IMI is a USFS nationally chartered organization. IMI provides technical consultation to Forest Service units with responsibilities for on-the-ground inventory, monitoring, and planning activities.