Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Would You Like Fires With That? Using Stakeholder-Derived Forest Management Preference Maps To Model Landscape-Level Fuel Reduction Treatment Effects On Wildfire Spread, Brooke A. Cassell, Robert M. Scheller, Max Nielsen-Pincus

ESM Colloquium

Management of public lands in the U.S. aims to achieve multiple goals relating to ecological function, wildlife habitat, support of local economies, and recreation; and in fire-prone landscapes these goals are often combined with fuels reduction treatments such as forest thinning and prescribed fire. Applied landscape research may attempt to evaluate the tradeoffs implicit in public lands planning or envision potential future land management scenarios, but often fails to incorporate the spatial diversity of stakeholder perspectives. This study explores the use of public participation geographic systems (PPGIS) to identify spatial and thematic community preferences for fuel treatments in a fire-prone …