Landscape conservation forecasting to evaluate ecological condition and wildlife habitat suitability in eastern Nevada U.S.A.

Introduction Cooperation among managers of protected areas and federal multiple use lands with private inholdings to increase restoration success and economies of scale creates ecological and regulatory complexity best studied with state‐and‐transition simulation models (STSM). Objectives Project partners asked whether (1) agency budgets are sufficient to lower the dissimilarity between current vegetation and the reference condition, (2) prescribed burning improves bighorn sheep habitat without excess reduction of older subalpine forest classes, (3) vegetation treatments reduce uncharacteristic fire activity, and (4) climate scenarios affect vegetation treatments and bighorn sheep habitat? Methods Spatial STSMs were run for a 161,569‐ha remote‐sensed vegetation map. Partners selected two management scenarios crossed with three 50‐year climate projections applied to 22 focal ecological systems with defined objectives, budgets, treatments costs and success rates, and metrics for vegetation and bighorn sheep. Results Drier climate suppressed fire but its greater precipitation variability increased fire and avalanche frequency. Treatments decreased area burned at lower elevations where non‐native annual fuels facilitated fires. Ecological departure (vegetation dissimilarity) from reference conditions was unchanged when lower elevation seedings included introduced species, but ecological departure decreased with native species seeding. Prescribed fire and increased avalanche frequency increased bighorn sheep habitat suitability.