Quantifying Intactness in Rapid Ecoregional Assessments: Tools and Lessons Learned

Beginning in 2009, the Bureau of Land Management launched multiple Rapid Ecoregional Assessments (REAs) across the western U.S., including Alaska, as part of their newly defined “Landscape Approach” to land management.  One key outcome of these REAs is to identify and create baseline data to represent key resources, including ecological and landscape intactness.  We present here the lessons learned from multiple ecoregional assessments in Alaska where we have modeled intactness. Although Alaska is largely considered to be pristine, we have worked with regional land managers to meaningfully define landscape and ecological intactness.  Our findings suggest that large ecoregions in the interior of Alaska are 98% intact, and is only expected to decrease to 96% by 2060.  However, we discuss the importance of moving from completely pristine to slightly less pristine in arctic and subarctic environments.  We conclude by discussing the different drivers of landscape change (climate vs. human development) and the suite of models we’ve used to understand cumulative landscape change.