Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership
A map of the project area for the Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership.
The Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership (Lake Tahoe West) is an interagency, multi-jurisdictional initiative that includes stakeholder participation and a science team. Its primary goal is to restore and maintain the resilience of the forests, watersheds, recreational opportunities, and communities in the western part of the Lake Tahoe basin.
Resilience refers to managing the landscape in ways that enhance its capacity to withstand drought, climate change, wildfire, increased visitor use, bark beetles, and other stressors, without the loss of its ecological processes and its cultural, recreational, and economic values.
The role of science in Lake Tahoe West is to provide objective, impartial information that informs decision-making. The initiative's secondary goal is to develop an approach to landscape restoration that can be replicated in and customized to remaining parts of the Lake Tahoe Basin, and the Sierra Nevada generally.
The U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station has taken the lead in building a collaborative science team that includes scientists from eight universities and three Forest Service research stations. The science team has examined a broad array of resource values, including forest health, wildfire effects, air quality, hydrology, water quality, wildlife, and economics.
Visit the NFF LTW site for more information.
 Lake Tahoe West Science Summary ReportAs 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. 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. |
 Erosion from road network in Lake Tahoe WestIn the Lake Tahoe Basin, residents and public and private organizations are all agreed that maintaining the pristine quality of the lake’s clarity is a priority. In spite of decreases in clarity in recent years, there is considerable interest in minimizing sedimentation and associated nutrient delivery to the lake. An analysis of road surface erosion and sediment delivery using GIS topographic tools and the Water Erosion Prediction Project WEPP: Road Batch interface estimated that the current road network was delivering 55 Mg of sediment per year. The report provides estimates for increased sediment delivery associated with harvesting operations and identifies areas for reducing erosion. |
 Modeling the effect of reopening abandoned roads in the Blackwood Watershed on hydrology and soil lossIn this study, a forest watershed was chosen and abandoned roads were manually identified, aided by a high-resolution LiDAR topographic image and historic photographic images. GIS technologies were used to describe topographic details and estimate runoff and erosion. The results showed that opening unused roads would likely alter surface flow paths and change channel structure and erosion. Channel density will generally decrease after road removal and increase if abandoned roads are reopened. Reopening roads would eliminate some channels by intercepting upstream runoff, but would also generate new channels by changing surface flow accumulation. |
 Estimates of Surface and Mass Erosion Following the 2016 Emerald WildfireIn 2016, the Emerald Fire burned 173 acres near the southwest corner of Lake Tahoe on the ridge between Cascade Lake and Tallac Creek. The occurrence of this fire in an area with two roads and a LIDAR elevation data set provided an opportunity to evaluate the impacts of roads on post wildfire erosion, and to test other postfire erosion modeling tools. This study evaluated road effects on soil erosion in a fire-disturbed forest with GIS technology and a soil erosion model, and the likelihood of mass failure by debris flow, translational failure and dry ravel. |
Air Quality
- Jonathan W. Long, Stacy Drury, Samuel Evans, Charles Maxwell, Robert Scheller. 2022. Comparing smoke emissions and impacts under alternative forest management regimes
Aspen restoration
- Justin P. Ziegler, Chad M. Hoffman, Brandon M. Collins, Jonathan W. Long, Christa Dagley, William E. Mell. 2020. Simulated fire behavior and fine-scale forest structure following conifer removal in aspen-conifer forests in the Lake Tahoe Basin, USA
Decision support and science integration
- Keith M. Reynolds, Angela M. White, Jonathan W. Long, Eric Abelson, Charles Maxwell, Patricia N. Manley. 2022. Evaluating pathways to social and ecological landscape resilience
- Eric Abelson, Keith M. Reynolds, Patricia N. Manley, Steven Paplanus. 2021. Strategic decision support for long-term conservation management planning
Economics
- Samuel G. Evans, Tim G. Holland, Jonathan W. Long, Charles Maxwell, Robert M. Scheller, Evan Patrick, Matthew D. Potts. 2022. Modeling the risk reduction benefit of forest management using a case study in the Lake Tahoe Basin
- Timothy Holland, Samuel Evans, Jonathan W. Long, Charles Maxwell, Robert Scheller, Matthew Potts. 2022. The management costs of alternative forest management strategies in the Lake Tahoe Basin
Forest resilience
- Charles Maxwell, Robert M. Scheller, Jonathan W. Long, Patricia N. Manley. 2022. Forest management under uncertainty: the influence of management versus climate change and wildfire in the Lake Tahoe Basin, USA.
- Charles Maxwell, Robert M. Scheller, Jonathan W. Long, Patricia N. Manley. 2022. Frequency of disturbance mitigates high-severity fire in the Lake Tahoe Basin, California and Nevada
- Kathryn E. Low, Brandon M. Collins, Alexis Bernal, John E. Sanders, Dylan Pastor, Patricia N. Manley, Angela M. White, Scott L. Stephens. 2021. Longer-term impacts of fuel reduction treatments on forest structure, fuels, and drought resistance in the Lake Tahoe Basin
Water quality and erosion
- Longxi Cao, William J. Elliot, Jonathan W. Long. 2021. Spatial simulation of forest road effects on hydrology and soil erosion after a wildfire
- Mariana Dobre, Jonathan W. Long, Charles Maxwell, William J. Elliot, Roger Lew, Erin S. Brooks, Robert M. Scheller. 2022. Water quality and forest restoration in the Lake Tahoe basin: impacts of future management options
Wildlife
- Keith M. Slauson, Becky D. Howard, Angela M. White, Charles Maxwell, Timothy Holland. 2022. Evaluating the effects of alternative landscape management scenarios on three old-forest-associated predators over 100 years in the fire-prone forests of the Sierra Nevada, USA
- Angela M. White, Tim G. Holland, Eric Abelson, Alec Kretchun, Charles J. Maxwell, Robert M. Scheller. 2022. Simulating wildlife habitat dynamics over the next century to help inform best management strategies for biodiversity in the Lake Tahoe Basin, California