Several initiatives seek to increase the pace and scale of dry forest restoration and fuels reduction to enhance forest resilience to wildfire and other stressors while improving the quality and reliability of key ecosystem services. Ecological effects models are increasingly used to prioritize these efforts at the landscape-scale based on simulated treatment outcomes. Treatments are often simulated using uniform post-treatment target conditions or proportional changes to baseline forest structure variables, but do not account for the common objective of restoration to mimic the complex forest structure that was present historically which is thought to provide an example of structural conditions that contributed to ecosystem diversity and resilience. We simulate spatially homogenous fire hazard reduction treatments along with heterogeneous restoration treatments in dry conifer forests to investigate how spatial complexity affects ecological indicators of (1) forest structural heterogeneity, (2) forest and watershed vulnerability to high-severity fire, and (3) feasibility of future prescribed fire use. Our results suggest that spatially explicit restoration treatments should produce similar wildfire and prescribed fire outcomes as homogeneous fuels reduction treatments, but with greater forest structural heterogeneity. The lack of strong tradeoffs between ecological objectives suggests the primary benefit of spatially complex treatments is to increase forest structural heterogeneity which may promote biodiversity. We show that landscape-scale prioritization to maximize ecological benefits can change when spatially complex restoration treatments are modeled. Coupling landscape-scale management simulations and ecological effects models offers flexible decision support for conservation assessment, prioritization, and planning.

中文翻译：

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模拟干燥针叶林恢复的空间复杂性：对保护优先级和情景评估的影响

多项举措旨在加快干旱森林恢复和燃料减少的速度和规模，以增强森林对野火和其他压力因素的抵御能力，同时提高关键生态系统服务的质量和可靠性。生态效应模型越来越多地用于根据模拟处理结果在景观尺度上优先考虑这些工作。处理通常使用统一的处理后目标条件或基线森林结构变量的比例变化来模拟，但不考虑恢复的共同目标，以模拟历史上存在的复杂森林结构，这被认为提供了结构条件的一个例子这有助于生态系统的多样性和复原力。我们模拟了干燥针叶林中空间同质的火灾危害减少处理以及异质恢复处理，以研究空间复杂性如何影响 (1) 森林结构异质性，(2) 森林和流域对高强度火灾的脆弱性，以及 (3)未来规定用火的可行性。我们的结果表明，空间明确的恢复处理应该产生与均质燃料减少处理类似的野火和规定的火灾结果，但具有更大的森林结构异质性。生态目标之间缺乏强有力的权衡表明空间复杂处理的主要好处是增加森林结构异质性，这可能会促进生物多样性。我们表明，当对空间复杂的恢复处理进行建模时，最大化生态效益的景观尺度优先级会发生变化。结合景观尺度管理模拟和生态效应模型，为保护评估、优先排序和规划提供灵活的决策支持。