Forest Resilience Models for Planning Management Actions in the Southern Sierra Nevada

CBI is working with the Sequoia Regional partnership on developing models to prioritize forest management actions to protect Sequoia groves from the threats of wildfires and climate change.

The need to plan strategic, effective forest management is urgent in the southern Sierra Nevada, where forests have been ravaged by drought, fire, and catastrophic tree mortality. Multiple, sometimes conflicting, management objectives must be balanced, and multiple agencies need help coordinating their forest restoration actions. A common, readily accessible system evaluating landscape-scale forest condition is needed.

Conservation Biology Institute is working with the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, Sequoia National Forest, Sequoia National Parks, Sequoia Parks Conservancy, Save the Redwoods League, and others to develop forest resilience models and create a toolkit for exploring these data to support the planning of a range of resource management goals. These goals include the protection of sequoia groves, overall forest health, wildfire protection, and endangered species habitat management.  The project is supported by CBI’s data sharing and mapping platform Data Basin.  The project is funded by the Save the  Redwood League and Sequoia National Park through its partner the Sequoia Parks Conservancy, and CAL FIRE Forest Health Research Grant Program.