A spatial decision support system for optimizing the environmental rehabilitation of borderlands

The border policies of the United States and Mexico that have evolved over the previous decades have pushed illegal immigration and drug smuggling to remote and often public lands. Valuable natural resources and tourist sites suffer an inordinate level of environmental impacts as a result of activities, from new roads and trash to cut fence lines and abandoned vehicles. Public land managers struggle to characterize impacts and plan for effective landscape level rehabilitation projects that are the most cost effective and environmentally beneficial for a region given resource limitations. A decision support tool is developed to facilitate public land management: Borderlands Environmental Rehabilitation Spatial Decision Support System (BERSDSS). The utility of the system is demonstrated using a case study of the Sonoran Desert National Monument, Arizona.