RAMAS Landscape
Integrating Metapopulation Viability
with LANDIS Forest
Dynamics Model
**** NEW ****
RAMAS Landscape integrates the landscape model LANDIS with the habitat-based metapopulation model RAMAS GIS. With the integration of a landscape and a metapopulation model, predictions about the viability, recovery, and growth of species can be based on the predicted changes in the landscapes in which they live.
In RAMAS Landscape, predictions of the landscape model LANDIS are used as input maps for the metapopulation model RAMAS GIS. The program combines landscape predictions, information about the habitat requirements of the species, and demographic data on its population dynamics into a metapopulation model, which has dynamic spatial structure simulating the changes in the landscape. This metapopulation model is then be run to simulate future changes in the abundance of the species and its distribution in the landscape, to estimate the risk of extinction or decline, time to extinction and other measures of threat and viability.
RAMAS Landscape has recently been applied to evaluating the effect of timber harvest regimes on the viability of the Sharp-tailed Grouse and the effect of altered fire regimes on the viability of Bell's Sage Sparrow in California.