Optimal spatial patterns of fuel management and timber harvest with fire risk

The stochastic and spatial nature of fire poses challenges for the cost-efficient allocation of fuel treatment over the landscape. A model that addresses complex but important components of fuel management decisions, spatial and dynamic aspects of fire risk, and a carefully designed framework that allows us to draw general insight into the optimal spatial pattern of management are necessary to provide a basis for developing efficient fuel treatment plans. For this purpose, we combine a physical fire model and a spatial-dynamic optimization model to explore harvest and fuel treatment across a hypothetical landscape under risk of a moving fire over a range of physical and economic conditions. Our model is able to describe spatial trade-offs involved in decision process, namely trade-offs between protection of on-site values and protection against fire spread. We found that the spatial configuration of management units can lead to heterogeneity in management across seemingly homogeneous units.