Prioritizing land management efforts at a landscape scale: a case study using prescribed fire in Wisconsin

One challenge in the effort to conserve biodiversity is identifying where to prioritize resources for active land management. Cost-benefit analyses have been used successfully as a conservation tool to identify sites that provide the greatest conservation benefit per unit cost. Our goal was to apply cost-benefit analysis to the question of how to prioritize land management efforts, in our case the application of prescribed fire to natural landscapes in Wisconsin, USA. We quantified and mapped frequently burned communities, and prioritized management units based on a suite of indices that captured ecological benefits, management effort, and the feasibility of successful long-term management actions. Data for these indices came from LANDFIRE, Wisconsin's Wildlife Action Plan, and a nationwide Wildland Urban Interface assessment. We found that the majority of frequently burned vegetation types occurred in the southern portion of the state. However, the highest-priority areas for applying p...