Managing the wildland-urban interface (WUI) is a widely-recognized land use problem plagued by a fractured geography of land parcels, management jurisdictions, and governance mandates and objectives. People who work in this field have suggested a variety of approaches to managing this interface, from informal governance to contracting to insurance. To date, however, none of these scholars have fully embraced the dynamism, uncertainty, and complexity of the WUI — that is, its status as a complex adaptive system. In focusing almost exclusively on the management of this interface to control wildfire, this scholarship largely ignores the factor that rampant wildfire is itself the product of incursions into important ecosystem services on both sides of the interface. In many cases, people tend to expand out towards the wildland not just for economics (cheaper housing) but also because of a suite of ecosystem services that are readily accessible at the interface, including aesthetics, a cleaner environment, and recreational opportunities. As the wildfire problem amply demonstrates, these settlers then become upset when other aspects of ecosystem function invade their lives, but those invasions include not just wildfire disasters but also more pernicious problems such as diseases, allergens, and wildlife. As such, development at the WUI can create a multifaceted desire to control several "undesirable" aspects of ecosystem function while simultaneously promoting the ecosystem services that residents desire, complicating land use management on both sides of a line that is itself often moving or transforming into a transition or buffer zone. To focus solely on wildfire, in other words, may oversimplify an increasingly complex management problem with significant policy implications. While we cannot and will not attempt to resolve all of these policy issues in this article, we do propose that adaptive management may provide a mechanism for dealing with the complexity of managing changing ecosystem functions and services at the WUI, even when — and perhaps especially because — the private lands and wildlands are usually subject to different land use regimes. We begin with an overview of adaptive management, then discuss the hard but common case of fractured landscape management. We then explore the potential for adaptive management to help negotiate this fractured landscape in a changing world, starting with the classic issue of wildfire management but also suggesting possible expansions.

中文翻译：

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跨荒地-城市界面的生态系统服务自适应管理

管理荒地-城市界面 (WUI) 是一个广为人知的土地利用问题，受到地块地理、管理权限以及治理任务和目标的断裂所困扰。在这个领域工作的人提出了各种管理这个接口的方法，从非正式的治理到合同再到保险。然而，迄今为止，这些学者都没有完全接受 WUI 的动态性、不确定性和复杂性——也就是说，它作为一个复杂的自适应系统的地位。在几乎完全专注于管理该界面以控制野火时，该奖学金在很大程度上忽略了这样一个因素，即猖獗的野火本身就是入侵界面两侧重要生态系统服务的产物。在很多情况下，人们倾向于向荒地扩张，不仅是为了经济（更便宜的住房），还因为在界面上可以轻松获得一套生态系统服务，包括美学、更清洁的环境和娱乐机会。正如野火问题充分表明的那样，当生态系统功能的其他方面侵入他们的生活时，这些定居者会变得不安，但这些入侵不仅包括野火灾难，还包括更有害的问题，如疾病、过敏原和野生动物。因此，WUI 的发展可以产生多方面的愿望，以控制生态系统功能的几个“不良”方面，同时促进居民期望的生态系统服务，线路两侧的土地使用管理复杂化，线路本身经常移动或转变为过渡区或缓冲区。换句话说，仅仅关注野火可能会过度简化日益复杂的管理问题，并具有重大的政策影响。虽然我们不能也不会尝试在本文中解决所有这些政策问题，但我们确实建议适应性管理可以提供一种机制来处理在 WUI 管理不断变化的生态系统功能和服务的复杂性，即使 - 或许尤其是因为——私人土地和荒地通常受制于不同的土地使用制度。我们从适应性管理的概述开始，然后讨论破碎景观管理的困难但常见的情况。