WK 19 - Forecasting Landscape Change Impacts Using State-and-Transition Models

Session Description: Landscapes are changing, due both to the ever-increasing human footprint and changing climatic conditions. In this workshop we present a general approach for forecasting landscape dynamics, called state-and-transition simulation models (STSM), that allows for the rapid development of robust models of vegetation change that may include changing environmental conditions, disturbance regimes, growth/succession, land conversion, mitigating treatments, etc. Participants will be led through the evolution of an STSM that represents conditions in the past, the present and the future, including the dynamic integration of STSMs with external models of other ecological processes and ecosystem values and benefits. Ultimately, workshop participants will gain an understanding of the flexibility and efficacy of this approach using free, publicly available software platforms and models that could be immediately used in a myriad of applications, courses and research activities.