LANDSCAPE APPROACH
The BLM's Landscape Approach for Managing Public Lands
BLM-managed public lands face complex and widespread environmental challenges that transcend traditional management boundaries, such as wildfire, weed and insect outbreaks, energy development, and urban growth. The BLM uses a landscape-scale management approach to better understand these challenges and support balanced stewardship of the diverse natural resources of the public lands.
Ecoregions are large, connected geographic regions that have similar environmental characteristics, such as the Sonoran Desert and the Colorado Plateau. Many ecoregions span administrative boundaries and can encompass all or portions of lands managed by several BLM field offices.
The BLM uses the landscape approach to examine these larger areas to help fully recognize natural resource conditions and trends, natural and human influences, and opportunities for resource conservation, restoration, and development. The approach enables the BLM to identify important ecological values and patterns of environmental change that may not be evident when examining smaller and more local land areas.
A landscape approach informs and enhances local management, enabling BLM field offices to maintain their central role in managing public lands. Field offices prepare land use plans, authorize land uses, conduct monitoring, and work with partners and stakeholders to develop and implement local management strategies. The broader perspective provided through a landscape approach helps focus and integrate these local management efforts. A landscape approach also provides an important foundation for developing coordinated management strategies with states, partner agencies, stakeholders, and American Indian tribes.
Landscape Approach History
The BLM’s landscape approach builds on land management concepts and experiences that have been evolving for more than three decades. BLM managers recognized in the early 1980s that western forests and rangelands were beset by widespread wildfires and weed and insect infestations that could no longer be managed effectively by local offices alone or through traditional management practices. Scientists, land managers, and stakeholders have been working since then to understand these wide-ranging impacts, develop shared strategies, and implement collaborative management efforts. These collective experiences and partnerships underpin the BLM’s landscape approach.
Components of the Landscape Approach
The BLM’s landscape approach consists of five interconnected components that provide a framework for integrating science and management. The five components include:
1. Rapid Ecoregional Assessments (REAs)
REAs synthesize the best available information about resource conditions and trends within an ecoregion. They highlight and map areas of high ecological value, including important wildlife habitats and corridors, and gauge their potential risks from wildfires, invasive species, energy development, and urban growth. REAs also map areas that have high energy development potential and relatively low ecological value, which could be suited for siting future energy development. In addition, REAs establish landscape-scale baseline ecological data to gauge the effect and effectiveness of future management actions.
Ecoregions are large landscapes defined by their ecological characteristics. The BLM has launched 14 REAs since 2010. The REAs comprise the following ecoregions: Central Basin and Range, Central Yukon, Chihuahuan Desert, Colorado Plateau, Madrean Archipelago, Middle Rockies, Mojave Basin and Range, North Slope, Northern Great Basin, Northwestern Plains, Seward Peninsula, Sonoran Desert, Southern Great Plains, and Yukon Kuskokwim.
2. Ecoregional Direction
BLM staff, partner agencies, stakeholders, and tribes will use the results of the REAs to identify key management priorities for the public lands within an ecoregion, otherwise known as ecoregional direction. The ecoregional direction component is used to identify priority areas for conservation and development, including key areas for conserving wildlife habitats and migration corridors and areas for potential energy development and transmission. During this component, the BLM develops a blueprint for coordinating and implementing these priorities at the BLM state and field office levels.
3. Field Implementation
Field implementation puts the management priorities and strategies identified in ecoregional direction into practice on the ground. The BLM accomplishes this by:
- Amending BLM land use plans, where necessary.
- Revising and implementing mitigation measures for authorized land uses, including best management practices.
- Implementing proposed projects and treatments.
- Performing monitoring.
- Developing budgets that focus and share management resources.
4. Monitoring for Adaptive Management
Consistent, high-quality monitoring information is essential for adaptive management. The BLM is modernizing its monitoring and mapping programs to meet this critical information requirement. The BLM’s Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM) Strategy is used to standardize data collection and retrieval so information is comparable over time and can be readily accessed and shared. The goal of the AIM Strategy is to provide the information needed to understand resource conditions and trends and to evaluate and refine implementation actions.
5. Science Integration
Science informs sound land management decisionmaking. The BLM regularly conducts a wide range of scientific research on the public lands, in cooperation with universities and state and federal agencies. The landscape approach is designed to more closely link science research with public land management issues and needs and to more fully integrate science information into resource planning and decisionmaking.
The Importance of Partnerships to a Landscape Approach
Partnerships are critical to successful resource stewardship. At the local level, partnerships develop shared management strategies, foster public awareness and support, and harness the volunteer assistance needed for effective implementation. Partnerships are equally vital at the landscape level, where the variety of land ownerships (federal, tribal, state, county, municipal, and private) can complicate effective responses to widespread environmental issues. The DOI recognizes the importance of resource management partnerships at the local and landscape levels. To encourage partnerships and expand their role and capacity, the DOI established a national network of landscape conservation cooperatives (LCCs).
LCCs are management/science partnerships composed of private, state, tribal, and federal representatives who work toward a shared vision of landscape health and sustainability. The LCCs facilitate collaboration, provide science information and tools needed for developing resource management strategies, and promote coordinated partnership actions at the landscape and local levels. The LCCs and the BLM’s landscape approach are complementary efforts that continue to become more fully integrated as they progress.
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