Prof. Fernando Sanchez co-authors a paper on Participatory GIS for forest restoration in ceded lands of the Intermountain West

Dr. Fernando Sanchez-Trigueros has co-authored the paper “Getting back to fire suméŝ: exploring a multi-disciplinary approach to incorporating traditional knowledge into fuels treatments”, which was published in Fire Ecology earlier this week. In this project to evaluate fuel treatment effectiveness, led by the Colville National Forest and the University of Idaho for the USDA Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, there was need to incorporate Confederated Colville Tribal member views regarding the location and effectiveness of fuel treatments within their ancestral territory. Evaluating fuel treatment effectiveness is challenging when managing such a landscape for diverse ecological, social, and economic values. To address these challenges, Dr. Sanchez provided “fuzzy GIS” support for a Participatory GIS process in collaboration with the Tribes.

These maps show areas where PGIS participants felt that fuels treatments could be applied (A), and where fuels treatments should be avoided (B) on the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project area of the Colville National Forest. The color scale on the lower right corner of the maps represents the proportion of PGIS participants that identified an area as benefiting from treatments or as a place where fuels treatments should be excluded for which 0 is none of participants and 1 is 100% of participants.
The paper demonstrates how incorporating Traditional Knowledge into fuels treatments through use of Participatory GIS can improve ongoing adaptive management of national forests that include tribal ancestral lands.