Forest Management and the Evolution of Project Design in Dynamic Wildland Urban Interface Fire Environments

Abstract:

The Truckee Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest, in the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, has a rich history of human activities. Native American influences, comstock-era logging, fire suppression, development, and recreation have all shaped the natural environment into what it is today. Like much of our national forests in California, forest conditions that have developed are generally much more homogenous and less resistant to disturbance from fire, insect, and disease than they might have been without the myriad of human influences. However, in order to improve the resiliency of our forests to stand replacing disturbances like high severity fire, while managing for integrated anthropomorphic values, it is imperative that management evolve to meet those dynamic needs. Recent advances in remote sensing and GIS allow land managers more access to forest information and can inform site specific prescriptions to change site specific undesirable conditions. It is ecologically and politically complex, yet our forests deserve that microscope. This particular presentation will focus on how the Truckee Ranger District began this process of incorporating several values, generated from stakeholder collaboration, into one project's goals and how those lessons learned informed their most recent project.