Learn about the Management Treatment Menu
Now that we understand how risk is determined, let’s explore the availability of management options (treatments) that could help us increase resilience.
Select feasible management treatments
A combination of eight umbrella management treatments are available on your landscape:
- Complex mechanical removal (steep slope clearcut, steep slope thinning, and urban clearing)
- Herbicides (broad and targeted applications)
- Herbivory (based on available vegetation palatable to livestock)
- Manual (invasives removal, thinning, urban clearing)
- Mechanical Rearrangement (grapple pile, mastication, mowing)
- Mechanical Removal (commercial thinning, small diameter, thinning)
- Prescribed (Rx) Fire (aerial ignition, low intensity ground fire)
Determining Management Option Availability
The applicability of the treatments are based on a series of operational constraints. Considerations such as vegetation type, steepness of slope, and other factors apply - based upon best management practices and considerations used by natural resource agencies. For more detailed information on definitions, management rules and subsequent FVS guidance, visit the Product Guide, Appendix C and D.
The Vibrant Planet Platform displays the feasibility of each type of management across your landscape.
Some areas of your landscape may be tagged as “limited feasibility” areas. This may be due to access (ex: limited roads) or landscape (ex: steep slope) constraints. In other areas, simply monitoring the area can be determined as the most appropriate course of action. Based on your unique knowledge of the landscape, you may elect to remove certain management treatments from Vibrant Planet’s recommendations.
Science Corner: Deeper dive on possible treatments
- In the case of steep terrain, complex mechanical treatment may be selected. In this case, larger diameter woody vegetation will be prioritized to offset some of the costs of this more expensive treatment
- Where undesired plant species grow, herbicide may be recommended to improve ecological resilience, following EPA guidelines and limitations
- Herbivory may be used prior to or after other treatment methods, or in isolation for fuels reduction.
- To reduce the severity of planned or unplanned fire, increase forest resilience to drought, and improve ecological function, mechanical removal may be recommended. This includes traditional whole tree or cut-to-length ground based logging and timber removal. Ground-based mechanical treatments generally only target woody vegetation and commonly result in a product benefit.
- Manual methods may also be applied, in which hand tools and small handheld power equipment are used to cut woody vegetation and invasive species, and may be followed up with treatments such as pile burns.
- Mechanical rearrangement may be used to rearrange fuels and distribute them evenly.
- In areas where natural revegetation is not predicted to occur within a target time frame, or where species are desired, growth of herbaceous shrubs and trees may be grown.
- Rx fire may be implemented, in conjunction with specific goals for flame height and burn plans.
In the next section, we will explore how Vibrant Planet considers all possible treatment options for each SARA based on operability constraints and considers which treatment has the greatest potential to reduce the risk of adverse impacts of wildfire on that SARA.