- Author: Brook Gamble
One of the common challenges across all environmental work is determining the impact we are making. Are we making a difference? Is it at the scale that we hoped for? Are people changing their attitudes or actions as a result of our programs and outreach materials? Has the environment benefited as a result of our effort? Are there areas that we could better spend our limited time and resources?
Unlike farmers, for example, we can't report back changes in yield per acre planted or larger fruits as a result of our efforts. We can't always prove whether an end result is correlated or caused by our efforts. But we still have to find a way to link our efforts to outcomes and accurately quantify some of the qualitative information...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
An aspen grove is an oasis of color and movement in Sierra Nevada forests. Smooth white architecture in the winter gives way to pale green leaves shimmering with the slightest breeze. In the fall, the leaves turn fire gold and flutter to the ground like giant snowflakes.
Besides their beauty, aspen groves are valued for providing myriad ecological services. The groves add species and landscape diversity to the Sierra Nevada. They offer higher water retention than the adjoining conifer forest, plus wildlife habitat and forage for livestock and wildlife.
Aspens are native to the Sierra Nevada and other areas with cool summer temperatures. Groves are typically clonal colonies that grew from a single seedling and spread when...
- Author: Brad Hooker
Water sloshes from a fill hole atop the steel tank and strikes the dirt road in puffs of dust. With weathered hands, short nails and a once black felt cowboy hat, Adam Cline motors the water truck through the anxious herd. Piled on the floor beside him are several 40 pound bags of soybean meal, a more affordable protein supplement that protects the herd from malnourishment. Cline is fortunate: his cautious management strategies over the last two years will likely carry this operation through yet another drought year, without having to sell off any cows.
“Every rancher is equipped for an average drought,” he tells me. “But a drought like this is really hard to manage for… Emotionally it's like a battle...
- Author: Steve Dreistadt
Beautiful but unwelcome in California wildlands, brooms are shrubs introduced into North America from Europe in the mid-1800s. Common species include Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) and Portuguese broom (Cytisus striatus). Brooms were introduced as ornamentals, but also were used extensively for erosion control along roadsides and in mined areas.
Now growing profusely in California forests, on roadsides, and wildlands, brooms:
- Crowd out out desirable vegetation
- Form impenetrable thickets that limit access to some areas
- Shade out tree seedlings, and...
- Author: Kim Ingram
On Aug. 10, 2013, a wildfire started in a steep canyon on the Tahoe National Forest. When it was finally declared controlled on Oct. 8, the 'American Fire' as it was named, had burned approximately 27,440 acres, including half (1,100 acres) of the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project (SNAMP) Last Chance study site.
Initiated more than 7 years ago, SNAMP is a collaboration project involving the University of California, UC Cooperative Extension, the US Forest Service, other state and federal agencies and the public that explores the effects of fuels reduction or thinning...
