Climate Adaptive Landscape Monitoring (CALM)

Photo Credit

USDA Forest Service Photo.

A burned area on the Mendocino National Forest after the 2018 Ranch Fire and 2020 August Complex.

This research effort aims to maximize our ability to adaptively manage our forests for future generations. To do this, we need a better understanding of the degree to which local conditions and broader-scale influences influence forest recovery and development.

Adaptive management at its core requires us to be nibble, flexible and to appreciate the ecological complexity of systems, as well as an environment where there is open communication, trust and a shared vision.

Partnered with managers, scientists help develop a post wildfire restoration portfolio to tackle and prioritize large scale management while identifying key knowledge gaps. On the ground, the Climate Adapted Landscape Monitoring (CALM) protocol is used to help track forest recovery in a changed climate.

Adaptive Management 3-Step Approach

Co-developed postfire restoration strategy

Researchers partnered directly with forest managers and staff to characterize the positive and negative fire effects, identify priority resources, and determine the level of investment needed to reach desired outcomes. This step culminates in a portfolio that landscape managers can utilize for restoration planning. While the work and findings from each framework can be extrapolated to help similar forests, each framework plan is individualized to the forest and produced using a unique collaborative methodology to ensure it meets management.

Co-developed research to test efficacy of local management actions

Management decision-making is complex, and it’s important to understand alternative actions, options, and tools available for postfire restoration, and how they compare. During the development of a postfire restoration strategy critical research gaps can be identified that hinder decision-making. By co-developing research questions to address these gaps, critical research needs can be addressed, and progress monitored relative to desired outcomes.

Long-term monitoring plots for adaptive management and on-going learning

Foundation work has contributed to our understanding of the response of forested ecosystems to disturbance; however, there is increasing uncertainty around how climate change with alter these ecological processes. Through Climate-adaptive Landscape Monitoring (CALM), ecosystem data is collected to increase our understanding of how a changing climate is likely to impact forest recovery and create an environment of shared learning.

Photo Credit

USDA Forest Service Photo.

Howard Lake, located in the Mendocino National Forest. 

Overview

The Mendocino National Forest is an approximately 65-mile-long and 35-mile-wide forest covering roughly million acres of northern California. Like most landscapes across the U.S., the Mendocino National Forest is contending with the growing threat of climate change, with warmer, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters, on the horizon.

The last decade on the Mendocino landscape 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 National Forest. In comparison, over the last 100 years only about one third of the Mendocino National Forest has burned. 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.

This restoration strategy pulls together scientific datasets and knowledge from forest managers to understand the status of ecosystem health and integrity across the Mendocino National Forest (MNF) and to identify short- and long-term restoration objectives and management needs in burned and unburned areas.

Mendocino Framework Interactive Story Map

Planning Goals

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

1. Increase the resilience of surviving forest stands by reducing disturbance (e.g., fire, bark beetles, etc.) risks.
2. Facilitate long-term conifer forest recovery utilizing both natural regeneration and nursey-grown seedlings of climate appropriate species.
3. Promote oak stand ecosystem recovery and health.

Focal Areas

Late Seral Habitat

Conifer Forests

Oak Woodland 

Outreach

Photo Credit

USDA Forest Service photo

Community members participate in interactive activities.

Partnering with the Mendocino National Forest, Firescape Mendocino, the California Climate Hub, and the Pacific Northwest Research Station, the research team held a series of interactive community workshops to solicit input on how the public values the landscape. The goal of these workshops is to provide forest managers with structured public input to better serve local communities.