Science To Action: Supporting the Wildfire Crisis Strategy in Montane Forests of Southern California

Conservation of montane forests in southern California depends on understanding the interactions between multiple severe disturbances, particularly climate change and altered fire regimes. Fire exclusion has led to changes in forest structure and composition, resulting in increased fire extent and severity. Climate change exacerbates these alterations, leading to the conversion of coniferous forests to hardwood and shrub communities in burned areas. Analysis of satellite imagery has shown a 14% decline in forest cover in southern California since 1985 due to severe wildfires and regeneration failure. Thus, managers are in a race to restore resilience to montane forests before high-severity fire results in type conversion. Practitioners in southern California have called for increased cross-agency coordination and partnerships to aid in accelerating the pace of restoration (Southern California Montane Forests Project).

This project aims to develop an interactive prioritization framework that incorporates refugia, vulnerabilities, and priority assets. Refugia is defined as areas with less exposure to interacting threats of wildfire, human pressures, and climate. Priority asset and vulnerability layers will be co-developed with managers and practitioners in workshops. Priority assets may include areas with ecological, cultural, or ecosystem service values, such as recreation or sensitive species habitat. A vulnerability is defined as a weakness to threats, such as uncharacteristically high-severity wildfire, prolonged severe drought, and outbreaks of forest insects or diseases that may negatively affect resource assets. Vulnerabilities have the potential to be changed or improved in the short term through management action. These three layers are then combined within the fuzzy logic Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS) to support managers in choosing whether to resist, accommodate, transform, or take no action to address potential impacts to forest resilience. The resulting online, interactive model will meet specific local needs while providing a transparent, consistent, and repeatable analysis method across the region. Two forests at different stages of framework development will serve as case studies for this process. 

Key partnerships will be established to generate priority assets and vulnerabilities for the Los Padres National Forest (LPF). We will engage with land managers and the key partners about management priorities to support landscape-scale strategic decisions with the EEMS as described above. The framework relies on outreach and engagement in a facilitated workshop format to identify a discrete set of factors for inclusion in the EEMS that reflects local priorities and concerns.

Framework success will be evaluated by co-developing an innovative management and monitoring framework to better connect priorities to outcomes in the San Bernardino National Forest (SBF). We will run 1-2 additional workshops to co-produce a monitoring plan that draws from manager and partner input to identify specific metrics that are key to determining success. 

Objectives

1. Develop a Prioritization Framework:
   • Advance an analytical prioritization framework that identifies montane forest landscapes most vulnerable to altered fire regimes and climate change by considering refugial capacity, vulnerabilities, and priority assets. This framework will be developed through a fuzzy logic modeling approach using the Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS) and will incorporate input from land managers and key partners.
   • Identify data gaps that impede management efforts. Collect forest structure data to validate future LiDAR data and provide input to EEMS. Identify species or resources of interest to local partners and create occupancy models to better map these priority assets. Collect data to improve inference and prediction of asset locations.
2. Establish Key Partnerships and Facilitate Knowledge Exchange:
   • Form key partnerships, particularly with the Los Padres National Forest, to facilitate knowledge exchange and co-develop a customized prioritization framework that supports landscape-scale strategic decisions. This will be achieved through interactive workshops and discussions with partners to identify priority assets and vulnerabilities specific to the Los Padres National Forest.
3. Implement and Monitor Management Strategies:
   • Co-develop an innovative implementation and monitoring plan with the San Bernardino National Forest that connects management priorities to outcomes. This will be accomplished through interactive workshops focused on identifying measurable objectives and developing a monitoring plan that supports adaptive management, with an emphasis on reducing forest vulnerabilities in refugial areas with high priority assets.

Expected Project Outcomes

1. Conduct interactive workshops to develop identify knowledge gaps, priority assets, and vulnerabilities.
2. Improve forest structure and priority species occupancy models with existing data sources and field data.
3. Prioritization framework to the Los Padres National Forest.
4. Monitoring plan to the San Bernardino National Forest.
5. Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS)- Interactive mapping platform for landscape prioritization that will incorporate local priorities, vulnerabilities, and refugia.