We recently had a question from an ST-Sim user:
Question:
Have you and your team simulated treatments in a landscape where Transition Targets were only applied to treatments without specifying the strata? The Pathways and Transition Multipliers would define the rules on implementation. To make this clear with a fictional example, you would specified 5,000 ha of RxFire in the landscape, but not specify anything specific for the following ecological strata: ponderosa pine, aspen-mixed conifer, and mountain big sagebrush. However, those disturbances would be in the proper classes of Pathways and might be fine-tuned with strata-specific transition multipliers.
Answer:
Yes. If you specify the targets and leave the stratum field blank (as a wildcard), then the model will decide how to apply your targets based on available area to transition in each stratum and relative probabilities. For example if you had a target for Prescribed Fire of 1000ha and 2 strata (A and B) each with equal available area totaling to an amount greater than the target, then the Prescribed Fire would be allocated to strata based on relative probabilities. For example if the pathway probability in A was double that of the probability in B then approximately 666 ha would be applied to stratum A and approximately 333 ha would be applied to stratum B.