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Lake Tahoe West Science Summary Report

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Lake Tahoe West Science Summary Report Lake Tahoe West Science Summary of Findings Report November 3, 2020 Cover Photo: Looking north to the Lake Tahoe West area from a prescribed burn at Baldwin meadow, with the burned area from the Emerald wildfire of 2016. Science Team Members Jonathan W. Long, Patricia N. Manley, Angela Mariana Dobre and Erin Brooks (University of M. White, Keith M. Slauson, Stacy A. Drury, Eric Idaho) S. Abelson, Brandon M. Collins (USDA Forest Sam Evans, Tim Holland, and Matthew Potts Service Pacific Southwest Research Station) (University of California at Berkeley) Keith Reynolds (USDA Forest Service Pacific Adrian Harpold and Sebastian Krogh Navarro – Northwest Research Station) (University of Nevada at Reno) William Elliot and I. Sue Miller (USDA Forest John Mejia (Desert Research Institute) Service Rocky Mountain Research Station) Chad Hoffman & Justin Ziegler (Colorado State Rob Scheller and Charles Maxwell (North University) Carolina State University) Abstract As part of the Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership, a science team worked with resource managers to evaluate effects of forest dynamics and management strategies on social and ecological values within a 59,000-acre landscape in the western part of the Lake Tahoe basin in California. Forest growth and fire dynamics were modeled across the landscape using the LANDIS-II platform over 100 years; interconnected models were used to evaluate changes in wildlife habitat, water quality, and economics. Additional modeling and some field monitoring were conducted to evaluate how treatments would affect fire behavior, fuels, and snow hydrology within forest stands. These investigations evaluated how different management strategies would affect outcomes important to stakeholders, including abundance of old trees, wildlife habitat, fine sediment, water quantity, implementation costs, fire characteristics and threats, air quality, cultural resource quality, and carbon sequestration. The scenarios spanned a wide range of management approaches, from wildfire-suppression only, fuels reduction near communities, moderate and extensive restorative thinning and/or prescribed burning. The results indicated that moderate and extensive thinning or burning treatments would promote overall objectives better than no treatment or thinning only near communities, except for carbon sequestration and treatment costs. Over the long-term, more treatment would reduce the wildfire threat to communities, the risk of unnaturally large patches of high intensity burns, and days of extreme emission of smoke into downwind communities. More extensive treatments were projected to increase water yield and promote the growth and occurrence of pine and aspen trees. Increased treatments, especially burning, may promote cultural resources important to the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California (hereafter the “Washoe Tribe”), who consider Lake Tahoe the center of their ancestral homelands. On the other hand, greatly ramping up prescribed burning may pose a challenge in terms of avoiding near-term impacts of treatments on air quality and water quality, even though such a strategy may yield long-term net benefits. i CONTENTS 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1-1 1.1 Landscape-scale Modeling ......................................................................................................... 1-3 1.2 Integrated Evaluation of Social and Ecological Values .............................................................. 1-3 1.3 Climate Scenarios ....................................................................................................................... 1-5 1.4 Management Scenarios ............................................................................................................. 1-6 1.4.1 Variation in treatment across scenarios ............................................................................ 1-8 1.4.2 Projected treatment intervals ............................................................................................ 1-8 1.5 Indicators and Target Conditions ............................................................................................... 1-9 2 Key Findings ....................................................................................................................................... 2-2 2.1 Landscape Fire ........................................................................................................................... 2-2 2.1.1 Area burned ....................................................................................................................... 2-2 2.1.2 Amount of landscape burned at low, moderate, and high severities ............................... 2-3 2.1.3 Amount of landscape burned in large high severity patches ............................................ 2-3 2.1.4 Fire return interval ............................................................................................................. 2-4 2.1.5 Percent of WUI zones burned at high and moderate severity .......................................... 2-4 2.1.6 Sensitivity of fire dynamics to climate ............................................................................... 2-4 2.1.7 Implications ........................................................................................................................ 2-5 2.2 Forest Structure and Composition ............................................................................................. 2-5 2.2.1 Dominant vegetation types................................................................................................ 2-5 2.2.2 Trends in forest species composition ................................................................................ 2-6 2.2.3 Seral Stage .......................................................................................................................... 2-7 2.2.4 Areas with old trees ........................................................................................................... 2-8 2.2.5 Implications ........................................................................................................................ 2-8 2.3 Carbon ........................................................................................................................................ 2-9 2.3.1 Forest ecosystem carbon ................................................................................................... 2-9 2.3.2 Whole system carbon ........................................................................................................ 2-9 2.3.3 Sensitivity to climate projections ..................................................................................... 2-10 2.3.4 Implications ...................................................................................................................... 2-10 2.4 Nitrogen ................................................................................................................................... 2-11 2.4.1 Implications ...................................................................................................................... 2-11 2.5 Landscape Water Quality Dynamics ........................................................................................ 2-11 ii 2.5.1 Effects of treatments on very fine sediment and phosphorus yield................................ 2-11 2.5.2 Effects of wildfire on very fine sediment and phosphorus yield ..................................... 2-12 2.5.3 Effects of alternative management scenarios on very fine sediment and phosphorus .. 2-12 2.5.4 Areas of high erodibility ................................................................................................... 2-12 2.5.5 Effects of changing climate on storm intensity and future loading ................................. 2-13 2.5.6 Implications ...................................................................................................................... 2-13 2.6 Water Quality and Roads ......................................................................................................... 2-13 2.6.1 Sedimentation from the current forest road network .................................................... 2-13 2.6.2 Implications ...................................................................................................................... 2-14 2.6.3 Water quality impacts from opening abandoned roads .................................................. 2-14 2.6.4 Implications ...................................................................................................................... 2-14 2.6.5 Erosion dynamics and interactions with roads following the Emerald Wildfire .............. 2-14 2.6.6 Implications ...................................................................................................................... 2-15 2.7 Water Quantity and Snow Dynamics ....................................................................................... 2-15 2.7.1 Effects of forest thinning on water quantity .................................................................... 2-15 2.7.2 Effects of forest thinning on snowpack duration ............................................................. 2-16 2.7.3 Translation to landscape, long-term scales, and modeled scenarios .............................. 2-16 2.7.4 Implications .....................................................................................................................
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