World Conference on Natural Resource Modeling

Ecological Considerations in Modelling to Reduce Risk of Wildfires

High Country Conference Center

Wildfires are a threat to communities in many parts of the world and there is general consensus that this threat will be aggravated by climate change. Mechanical clearing and controlled burning are methods used to reduce fuel loads in the landscape and hence the risk of wildfires. But these actions impact on the habitat needs of fauna. Flora also have limited tolerances to such disturbances while fire-dependent species require a certain frequency of burning. Further given constraints on resources to accomplish fuel-reduction tasks the question of "where to burn when" becomes complex. A spatio-temporal mixed integer programming model will be presented and illustrated to deal with this problem. The model attempts to maximise the spatial fragmentation of high fuel load while maximising connectivity of habitat.