A century of fire management in the Sierra has had the unintended consequence of placing millions of hectares of forest at risk of catastrophic fire. This assessment of fire hazard is reflected in the 2004 Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment, which suggests modifying wildland fire behavior through applying strategic fuel management at landscape levels, an approach based on the theory that disconnected fuel treatment patches that overlap in the direction of the head fire spread reduce the overall rate and intensity of fire. Simulations have shown that with 30% of the area in strategically placed area treatments (SPLATs), fire risk can be decreased for the entire landscape. Despite sound conceptual underpinning of strategic fuel treatments, there is uncertainty regarding their efficacy in modifying fire behavior and concern regarding potential impacts on wildlife, large-scale forest health and water resources. Moreover, given the history of debate over resource management in the Sierra Nevada, a lasting solution must engage stakeholders and promote active public participation in all phases of the process, including the development, interpretation, and incorporation of research-based information in the adaptive management decision making process.
A science team from UC Berkeley, UC Merced, UC Cooperative Extension, and University of Minnesota has been developed to provide scientific evaluation of the possible impacts of the
USDA Forest Service planned fire treatments found in the “Record
of Decision” called Strategically Placed Land Area Treatments
(SPLATs). We will develop, implement and test Adaptive Management processes
through testing the efficacy of SPLATs
across four response variables: public participation, wildlife, water, & fire/forest
health. Many
UC, ANR and other colleagues are involved in this project, including Roger
Bales and former lab member Qinghua
Guo at UC Merced, Reg Barrett,
John Battles, Lynn Huntsinger and Scott Stephens at UC Berkeley,
Rocky Guitirrez at the University of Minnesota, and Kim Rodriquez at ANR (plus many grads, staff and postdocs). This is not a complete list,
and the project will be a large, multidisciplinary one. We have long-term funding from our agency partners beginning in 2007 involving pre-treatment, treatment and post-treatment analysis in two sites in the Sierra Nevada: the Sierra National Forest in the south, and the Tahoe National Forest in the north. Qinghua and I are involved in the spatial information analysis supporting this research.
SNAMP Outreach
Inputs from an engaged citizenry is critical to this process. As well as being on the Spatial Team, I am a member of the Public Participation Team (with Lynn Huntsinger at UC Berkeley and Kim Rodriguez at UC Cooperative Extension), which will be observing the SNAMP process to gain insights on interactions between the Forest Service and the public stakeholders and developing a range of tools to increase dialogue. These tools include traditional public participatory tools such as public meetings, charettes and field visits, but also include web-based tools such as discussion boards and volunteer driven web-GIS discussioning. These websites underscores our commitment to transparency and public participation in the overall SNAMP process. My role in the project is to develop these web tools (discussion boards and webGIS sites) to better facilitate discussions across the adaptive management process. Thus far we have enabled a public discussion of the science team’s workplan development, and we have several topic-constrained discussion areas. What we are currently developing is a webGIS portal for the discussion board, to allow space-based discussion, and space-specific feedback regarding the current treatments.
Graduate student
Ken'ichi Ueda has been working on the website, and Graduate Student
Marek Jakubowski is working on the remote sensing and outreach
parts of the project.
More Information:
http://snamp.cnr.berkeley.edu/
