>Chapter 4 Challenges and Needs in Fire Management: A Landscape Simulation Modeling Perspective

Fire management will face many challenges in the future from global climate change to protecting people, communities, and values at risk. Simulation modeling will be a vital tool for addressing these challenges but the next generation of simulation models must be spatially explicit to address critical landscape ecology relationships and they must use mech-anistic approaches to model novel climates. This chapter summarizes im-portant issues that will be critical for wildland fire management in the future and then identifies the role that simulation modeling can have in tackling these issues. The challenges of simulation modeling include: (i) spatial representation, (ii) uncertainty, (iii) complexity, (iv) parameter-ization, (v) initialization, (vi) testing and validation. The LANDFlRE project is presented as an example on how simulation modeling is used to support current fire management issues. Research and management needs for successful wildland fire-related simulation modeling projects will need (i) exteusive mechanistic research programs, (ii) comprehen-sive databases, (iii) statistical validation methods and protocols, (iv) software and hardware research, (v) modeling science explorations, and (vi) extensive training. Models will continue to play an integral role in fire management but only if the science keeps pace and managers are poised to take advantage of advances in modeling