Photo Credit

USDA Forest Service photo

A black bear scratches its back against a tree in a post-fire Mendocino National Forest landscape.

In Northwestern California lies the Mendocino National Forest, a 65-mile-long and 35-mile-wide forest covering just under one million acres of California. Like most landscapes across the U.S., the Mendocino NF is contending with the growing threat of climate change, with warmer, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters, on the horizon. Examining climate change within the context of changing fire regimes, however, is when that full picture for landscape planning comes into view. The last decade on the Mendocino NF has seen unprecedented fires, including the 2018 Mendocino Complex fire (encompassing the Ranch Fire) and the 2020 August Complex Fire, which together burned about 90% of Mendocino NF land. To put this into perspective, only about a third of the Mendocino NF has burned in the last 100 years. This has created the challenge of how managers can best plan for resilient forests of the future, in the wake of post-fire ecosystem recovery.

A transdisciplinary team including Dr. Angela White and Kate Faber from the Pacific Southwest Research Station, Gabrielle Bohlman and Ramona Butz with Forest Service Region 5, and Morris Johnson from the Pacific Northwest Research Station worked with the Mendocino NF to create a post-fire restoration plan of action. In addition to the support from within the Mendocino NF, Forest Service Region 5, Oregon State University, and the Pacific Northwest Research Stations supported this work. Together this team developed the climate-adapted landscape monitoring (CALM) framework for meeting the needs of post-fire restoration and pre-fire planning across the landscape. By considering both the needs and concerns of land managers, forest partners, and stakeholders, the team developed three major goals: (1) increasing the resilience of surviving forest stands by reducing disturbance (e.g., fire, bark beetles, etc.) risks, (2) facilitating long-term conifer forest recovery utilizing both natural regeneration and nursey-grown seedlings of climate appropriate species, and (3) to promote oak stand recovery and health, including their associated wildlife. To meet these goals, the team developed a priority planning strategy for identifying the key areas where management resources would be the most beneficial, given the current and future landscape conditions. With the aid of ecological and fire mapping resources and this decision-making strategy tree, the Mendocino NF aims to improve the health and resilience of their landscape after these historic fires.

For Dr. White, and collaborator Dr. Alyssa Thomas, there’s another key component to this study, conveying the complexity of forest management actions to the public. To that end, the pair, with support from Firescape Mendocino, the California Climate Hub, Forest Service Region 5, and the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain Research stations, have implemented a series of community meetings to hear directly from the public on their vision for wildfire restoration efforts. In addition to giving public stakeholders a voice, these interactive meetings have the added benefit of allowing for the Mendocino NF managers to receive structured public input on their possible management actions, creating a holistic forest recovery strategy. While the Mendocino NF is one of the first to undergo the CALM post-fire strategic process, the team aims to continue refining the strategic planning process by working with national forests throughout the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Southwest regions.

Fire history from 2000-2020 across the Mendocino National Forest. Maps above display fire footprints from 2000 to 2017 fires (left) and fire footprints of the 2018 Ranch Fire and 2020 August Complex (right).

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Around the Station

A Career in Review: Biocontrol with Nancy Chaney

Sometimes pest species become so widespread that the only hope of reducing their impact on a landscape scale is to use biological control (biocontrol), or the control of undesirable target species using a natural enemy, or control agent. It takes years to find, test, deploy, and monitor biocontrol agents, so institutional knowledge developed and held by long-term research staff like Nancy Chaney is key to success.

Looking back at her 12 years with the Forest Service, Nancy describes her experience as an enjoyable mix of field work and office work, with opportunities to engage in many aspects of the biocontrol program at the Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry (IPIF). After working in genetics, she came to the Forest Service and shifted gears to apply her scientific training to insect-focused projects. It was a welcome change from working at a lab bench - she’s always loved being out in nature, and “as challenging as the environment can be, it’s a real benefit because we go places that visitors normally wouldn’t and some of these places are filled with native plants and insects.” From the beginning, Nancy took on many tasks to keep the biocontrol program running smoothly, starting with caring for a colony of insects being tested as potential control agents for the invasive Miconia plant. Over time her duties included working with grants and agreements, and serving as the Quarantine Officer for the quarantine facility in Volcano, where insect control agents are tested to make sure they are host-specific and will not attack non-target plants.

Nancy is particularly proud of her work on the genetics of Albizia, an invasive tree and target species. Often, scientists will investigate the genetics of target species to understand their geographic origin more fully. By narrowing down the source population of an introduced species, researchers are better able to identify that species’ natural enemies in its home range. Nancy drew on her previous experience to contribute to this kind of work at the Forest Service. “Extracting DNA from some organisms is pretty easy, but when you get into plants it’s not always the case because they have all these protective compounds that complicate the process, like PCR reactions.” With the help of next generation sequencing Nancy and her PSW collaborators have obtained preliminary data “which felt like a major coup because all those samples were hard-won.”

At the end of this month, Nancy will be retiring and getting ready to move. “The town in Oregon we’ll be living near is a quilting mecca, so I’ll be able to do all kinds of things like quilting workshops during the week - because I’ll be retired!” As she approaches the end of her career, Nancy fondly remembers the others she's worked with - “I have to say through this whole 12 years, and with some life things that have happened, everyone at the Forest Service has been really supportive. It's really special place with a great combination of aloha and ambition. I really thrived doing that kind of work.”

Webinars & Events

Webinar Recordings

SCIENCEx Human Dimensions Week

March 25th - March 29th will be SCIENCEx Human Dimensions week. Forest Service researchers will cover topics such as equitable recreation, partnering with communities, the benefits and value of nature, managing urban forests, and preparing for wildland fire.

SCIENCEx Human Dimensions Week - Register Here

SCIENCEx Webinar Archive

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External Media

Battling Invasive Fungi to Save Native Hawaiian Trees
 

Native trees connect us to our forests. This is especially true of the ‘ōhi‘a lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha) — a native tree in Hawai‘i that grows naturally nowhere else on Earth.

Read more: Pacific Southwest Region

Forest Service's burned research area fuels case for thinning and prescribed burns

YREKA, Cal. -- The U.S. Forest Service says today the aftermath of a Northern California wildfire is fueling its own insights into wildfire recovery.

Read more: KDRV ABC 12

Publication Highlight

More PSW Publications via Treesearch

Pacific Southwest Research Station

The Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) was founded in 1926 as a part of the Research and Development branch of U.S. Forest Service. Since its inception, PSW has expanded to serve California, Hawai'i, and the US-affiliated Pacific Islands. PSW develops and delivers science-based information, technologies, and applications to help people make informed decisions about natural resource management, conservation, and environmental protection.

Fact and Trivia Corner
How many different species of woody plants are found in the Mendocino National Forest?

The Mendocino NF has catalogued over 90 species of woody plants, from fir trees, to oaks, to manzanita, to pine. Check out their catalogued list here.