11/20/20
Restoration Thematic Group Webinar Series
California’s Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative
Restoring resilience, adapting to climate change, and anticipating system transformations on the horizon
Dorian Fougères, PhD November 20, 2020 Vice Chair, CEM Resilience Thematic Group Acting Deputy Director, State of California Tahoe Conservancy
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Presentation Outline
Part 1. Lake Tahoe Foundations Part 2. Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Part 3. Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Part 4. System Transformations on the Horizon
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Part 1. Lake Tahoe Foundations
Credit: Danville Social 3
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Lake Tahoe Foundations Public Lands in the Lake Tahoe Basin
Credit: Google Maps 2020 4 Credit: USDA Forest Service 2006
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Lake Tahoe Foundations Angora Fire (2007) and King Fire (2014)
Credit: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection 2007 Credit: Carol May 2014 5
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Lake Tahoe Foundations Landscape Restoration
Federal Collaborative Forest Forest Landscape Landscape Restoration Program Collaboratives in California
Credit: USDA Forest Service 2020 Credit: Sierra Institute for Community and Environment 2018 6
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Part 2. Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership
Credit: Tahoe Regional Planning Agency 7
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Process Design
Forest Landscape Management Cycle
Credit: California Tahoe Conservancy 8
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Process Design
Coupling Forests and Watersheds with Communities
Credit: California Tahoe Conservancy
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Process Design
Project Landscape
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Assessment
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Assessment
Resilience of What – uplands, meadows, aquatics, public health & safety, cultural landscapes, recreation
For Whom – To What – fire & smoke, residents, business, flood, drought, insects & Washoe Tribe, and disease, other climate recreationists impacts, erosion, air pollution, human activity
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Assessment
EcObjects Vertical Water Quality Flood Resilience Vegetative Heterogeneity
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Strategy
Linked Modeling
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Strategy
Four Modeling Scenarios
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Strategy
Modeling Outputs
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Strategy
Functionally, the Strategy provides 1. A framework for multiple-benefits over 20+ years 2. Science-based landscape-scale goals, strategies, and quantified objectives 3. Management approaches for a single 60,000-acre project including 4. Tools for managers 5. The basis for adaptive management
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Strategy
Objectives for Goal 1 1. Decrease tree density on 40,000 acres 2. Increase under-represented seral stages on 23,000 acres 3. Maintain forest openings on an aggregate of 21% of the landscape 4. Restore 400 acres of aspen and riparian hardwood forests 5. Reforest post-disturbance openings >40 acres or when openings exceed 34% of area18
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Strategy
Implementation Strategies 1. Increase pace and scale of forest thinning and prescribed fire 2. Restore meadows, manage invasive species, increase habitat connectivity, and support native plants and wildlife 3. Restore streams 4. Build resilience in the local recreation and forest management economy 5. Expand engagement with the Washoe Tribe 6. Collaborate across land ownerships 7. Manage roads and trails for long-term stability 19
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Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership Landscape Resilience Strategy
Anticipated Landscape Outcomes 1. Reduce the risk of high-severity fire by 50% and the risk of property losses by as much as $4M per year 2. Increase the amount of managed, low-intensity fires by 8x or more 3. Reduce days with very high smoke emissions by 90% -- and millions of dollars’ worth of avoided health costs 4. Triple the amount of old forests to sustain associated wildlife over the next 50 yrs 5. Protect native fish, water resources, and lake clarity 6. Enhance plant, wildlife, and cultural resource diversity 7. Allow for expected increases in carbon sequestration of 40% over 100 years
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Part 3. Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative
21 Credit: USDA Forest Service, Brian Homburger 21
Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative From 60,000 to 2.4 Million Acres (971,000 ha)
Project Landscape Region
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Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Original Focus
“What can we do together that we are not big enough to do alone?” Working across National Forest jurisdictions makes it possible to: 1. Apply large-scale prescribed fire (thousands of acres in a single burn) while minimizing regional smoke impacts 2. Manage natural fire ignitions for resource benefits (rather than suppressing)
Credit: USDA Forest Service
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Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Original Focus
3. Manage sub-populations of California spotted owl and other endangered or threatened species 4. Guarantee a sufficiently large, long-term supply of timber and
Credit: USDA Forest Service small diameter restoration byproducts to sustain a regional forest products industry 5. Manage increasing numbers of visitors and through-hikers on long- distance regional trails (e.g., the Pacific Crest Trail, Tahoe Rim Trail)
Credit: Tahoe Rim Trail Association 24
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Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Conveners
1. USDA Forest Service 1. Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit 2. Tahoe National Forest 3. Eldorado National Forest 4. Pacific Southwest Research Station 2. California Tahoe Conservancy 3. Sierra Nevada Conservancy 4. National Forest Foundation 5. The Nature Conservancy 6. Cal. Dept. of Forestry & Fire Protection 7. Cal. Forestry Association 25
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Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative A Network of Collaboratives
1. Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership 2. Sagehen Experimental Forest Project 3. North Yuba Forest Resilience Project 4. Western Nevada County Defensible Space Project 5. French Meadows Project 6. South Fork of the American River Cohesive Strategy 7. Caples Ecological Restoration Project 8. Greater Upper Truckee River Watershed Partnership 26
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Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Framework for Resilience – Desired Landscape Outcomes
Forest resilience: Vegetation composition Water security: Watersheds provide a and structure align with topography, desired reliable supply of high-quality water despite disturbance dynamics, and landscape wide swings in annual precipitation, conditions, and are adapted to climate droughts, flooding, and wildfire. Water change. reliability, quantity, and quality are buffered against precipitation variability and Fire dynamics: Fire burns in an ecologically disturbance. beneficial and socially acceptable way that perpetuates landscape heterogeneity and Air quality: Emissions from fires are limited rarely threatens human safety or to primarily low and moderate fires in infrastructure. wildland ecosystems. Forests improve air quality by capturing pollutants. Carbon sequestration: Carbon sequestration is enhanced in a stable and sustainable Fire-adapted communities: Communities manner that yields multiple ecological and understand the ecological significance of social benefits. fire, have adapted to live safely in forested landscapes, and support beneficial fire. Wetland integrity: Meadow and riparian There is sufficient capacity to manage ecosystems have functional hydrology and desired fire and suppress unwanted fire. biology such that they provide multiple ecosystem services and are key linkages Economic diversity: Forest management between upland and aquatic systems in and outdoor activities support a sustainable, forested landscapes. natural, resource-based economy. Biodiversity conservation: The network of Social & cultural well-being: The landscape native species and ecological communities is provides a place for people to connect with sufficiently abundant and distributed across nature, to recreate, to maintain and improve the landscape to support and sustain their their overall health, and to contribute to full suite of ecological and cultural roles. environmental stewardship, and is a critical component of their identity. 27 27
Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Framework for Resilience – Elements and Metrics
Social & Cultural Well-being Water Security Element Core Metrics Element Core Metrics Public health Smoke-induced illness Quantity Ground water Public health susceptibility Water yield Public Natural resource knowledge Snow accumulation engagement Storage Stream flow volume Recreation Costs and benefits to recreation and timing Reservoir storage quality Snow water content Equitable Environmental justice Snow melt opportunity Quality Nitrogen, Phosphorus Sediment Economic Diversity Pollution Element Core Metrics Wood product Biomass supply and demand Wetland Integrity industry Small diameter tree supply and Element Core Metrics demand Structure Stream channel morphology Processing capacity Alluvium storage capacity Recreation Recreation diversity Composition Carbon content industry Recreational use Benthic invertebrates Water industry Water management infrastructure Hydrologic Surface water flow Economic health Job market in natural resources function Stream channel discharge Employment resilience Income diversity Biodiversity Conservation Element Core Metrics Fire Dynamics Focal species Suitable habitat for focal species Element Core Metrics Critical habitat for listed species Severity Risk of high severity fire Species Species diversity High intensity patch size diversity Non-native species distribution Functional fire Time since fire and frequency Community Functional group diversity28 Proportion of fire as high severity integrity Community diversity 28
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Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Landscape Resilience Assessment – Current Conditions
Biodiversity Conservation Forest Resilience Water Security
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Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Landscape Resilience Assessment – Current Conditions
Economic Diversity Composites
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Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Landscape Resilience Strategy or “Blueprint”
Plan to use Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) tool to 1. Synthesize data on current and future conditions 2. Evaluate management options for multiple criteria at multiple scales 3. Involve land managers and stakeholders in prioritizing management locations 4. Produce spatially-explicit maps of achievable outcomes per the Framework
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Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative Replication across the Entire Range
Examples (a) Sierra Nevada Strategic Investment Plan (nascent)
(b) Governor’s Forest Management Task Force (recommendations forthcoming)
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Part 4. System Transformations on the Horizon
Credit: USDA Forest Service
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System Transformations on the Horizon Conceptual Foundation
Resilience ● Adaptive cycle ● Panarchy ● Transformation
Credit: Gunderson and Holing eds 2002 Credit: Gunderson and Holing eds 2002 34
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System Transformations on the Horizon Transformations on Tahoe’s Horizon
Cessation of lake mixing and further clarity loss Loss of the ski industry
Credit: USDA Forest Service
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System Transformations on the Horizon Transformations on the Sierra Nevada’s Horizon
Changes in Annual Precipitation Extreme Precipitation Intensities
Credit: USDA Forest Service
Credit: State of California 4th Climate Assessment, Sierra Nevada Regional Report Credit: State of California 4th Climate Assessment, Sierra Nevada Regional Report 36
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System Transformations on the Horizon Transformations on the Sierra Nevada’s Horizon
Tahoe National Forest 2017 Road, Trail, and Campground Damages
Credit: USDA Forest Service
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System Transformations on the Horizon Large Wildfires in the Central Sierra since 2000
Lake Tahoe
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System Transformations on the Horizon Landscape Resilience Assessment – Future Conditions
Six Modeled Management Scenarios 1) Defense zone + private industrial + private non-industrial 2) 1 + Threat 3) 2 + Public forest 4) 3 + More treatment in Threat 5) 4 + Match historic fire return interval, more thinning 6) 4 + Match historic fire return interval, more prescribed fire
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System Transformations on the Horizon Landscape Resilience Assessment – Future Conditions
Initial Findings 1) Climate-amplified beetle-kill over the next 20 years will cause major declines in biomass including old trees; change composition; and switch the landscape from carbon sequestration to source 2) Management is competing with disturbances for harvestable material 3) Area burned will increase 4) Forest management can reduce the proportion of high-intensity fire and large patches
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System Transformations on the Horizon Landscape Resilience Assessment – Future Conditions
Mean climatic water deficit Biomass killed annually by insects
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System Transformations on the Horizon Landscape Resilience Assessment – Future Conditions
Tree Mortality
Credit: USDA Forest Service Credit: Derek Young, Univ of California at Davis 42
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System Transformations on the Horizon Landscape Resilience Assessment – Future Conditions
Cumulative area burned by intensity Sequestration rate
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System Transformations on the Horizon Landscape Resilience Assessment – Future Conditions
Forest cover type
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System Transformations on the Horizon Where to from here? The transformation curve
California’s August 2020 Lightning Event • 3,055 lightning strikes in 24 hours • 23% within National Forests
Credit: USDA Forest Service, Tahoe National Forest, US Bureau of Land Management, National Interagency Fire Center
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System Transformations on the Horizon Ahead of the Transformation Curve
Forest Landscape Management Cycle
Credit: California Tahoe Conservancy 46
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