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Page count: 35

The U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories (USACERL) has developed a series of models to study the processes involved with building dynamic landscape simulations (DLS). This DLS model applies to a desert tortoise population (a Federally listed threatened species) at Fort Irwin, CA, which has been the Army's National Training Center since 1979. This report demonstrates new methods available to assess the impacts of military training at Fort Irwin across time and space on desert tortoises and their habitat. Recently, efforts in computer-based simulation have been directed towards developing spatially explicit models, but the spatial distribution and complexity of land characteristics make it difficult to analyze and simulate a landscape as a whole. Partitioning a landscape into small but connected parcels makes it possible to work with patches of land that can be treated as homogeneous for certain analyses. This approach seems especially useful for developing spatially explicit models for endangered species on military lands. The results of this model demonstrate how to evaluate the potential effects of military training on desert tortoises and their habitat. These results are not expected to provide land managers with detailed predictions of specific impacts, but do demonstrate the feasibility of using this modeling approach to develop landscape-level simulations.