Landscape Simulator (LSim) replicate data resulting from leveraging wildfire as a management strategy to restore old growth forest structure while stabilizing carbon stocks in the southwest United States

Simulation modeling was used to examine long-term tradeoffs of alternative carbon management strategies by combining two wildfire management alternatives with three levels of contemporary forest restoration treatments on a 778,000-hectare landscape over 64 years using data from 2000-2019. Forest Service lands in the study area underwent restoration treatments on 237,218 hectares across the Kaibab and Coconino National Forests. The data within this package were either produced by the Landscape Simulator (LSim) or used to summarize or visualize these data. The foundation of the simulated data is built around forest growth and mortality simulations via the Forest Vegetation Simulator, and wildfire activity via the large Fire Simulator. Simulated data include a temporal accounting of forest stands, alongside the effects of mechanical thinning, prescribed fire, and area burned by wildfire. Data include tree stand characteristics by tree species (trees per acre; basal area, etc.), carbon stocks, and fire-induced mortality. Data needed to summarize the simulated data include stand characteristics and a record of which tree stands were included within our study area. Spatial data included for visualization are planning area polygons and tree stand polygons.
To assess tradeoffs and synergies between traditional forest restoration and managing wildfire to meet forest management and carbon objectives.
For more information about this study and these data, see Young et al. (2024).