Natural Disturbance Regime Assessments

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Understanding the natural disturbance regime of a watershed allows for the development of management and protection measures that will maintain the watershed in as natural a condition as possible.

Interagency Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) Guidebook (PDF) <broken link> (127 pp, 1.78MB, About PDF)
The FRCC Standard Landscape Worksheet Method and Mapping Method provide tools for fire regime and vegetation assessment at the landscape and stand levels. These methods are used to describe general fire regime and vegetation traits for the historical (reference) versus current periods to produce departure estimates that can be classified as falling within an historic range (green), moderately altered from their historic range (yellow), and significantly altered  from their historic range (red).

Local:
Rocky Mountain Landscape Simulator
RMLANDS is a computer software program designed to simulate natural (e.g., fire) and anthropogenic (e.g., logging) disturbances and succession processes in the Rocky Mountains. The software is being developed to aid Forest Service planners evaluate the historic range of variation in landscape structure and wildlife habitat, and to evaluate the potential consequences of alternative future land management scenarios.

Assessment of Stream Ecosystem Function and Sensitivity in the Bighorn National Forest, Wyoming (PDF) (19 pp, 598K, About PDF)
This paper presents a hierarchical analysis of stream ecosystem distribution and sensitivity to natural and anthropogenic disturbances for the Bighorn National Forest, Wyoming.

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