- Author: Mike Hsu
UCCE forest advisor helps landowners, community groups determine best project options
As Californians prepare for another year of drought and an anticipated intense fire season, landowners and organizations across California have been working to reduce forest fuels – flammable woody material – that can endanger their properties and communities.
For many of them, however, their urgent efforts hit a sizable speed bump: a massive rulebook that describes, amid a thicket of other information, the permits required before people can treat or remove fuels – as well as a litany of attached requirements, restrictions and...
- Author: Kat Kerlin, UC Davis
Study finds resilient, frequent-fire forests have far fewer trees
What does a “resilient” forest look like in California's Sierra Nevada? A lot fewer trees than we're used to, according to a study of frequent-fire forests from the University of California, Davis.
More than a century ago, Sierra Nevada forests faced almost no competition from neighboring trees for resources. The tree densities of the late 1800s would astonish most Californians today. Because of fire suppression, trees in current forests live alongside six to seven times as many trees as their ancestors did — competing for less water amid drier and hotter...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
To help California forest property owners adapt to the changing climate, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) has produced a 13-page peer-reviewed paper that outlines actions owners can take to sustain their forests' value even when temperatures rise.
“Managers of forest land have always had to adapt to changing conditions – such as markets, urban encroachment, droughts and floods,” said Susie Kocher, UC Cooperative Extension forestry and natural resources advisor. “We wrote this paper to help forest managers better understand the evolving science of climate change and how they can help their forests adapt to the climate of the...
- Author: Ann King Filmer
California’s renowned coast redwood trees, previously believed to be fireproof, are now more than four times more susceptible to wildfire injury in coastal forest areas infested with the sudden oak death pathogen. These redwoods are now as susceptible to wildfires as other trees.
Millions of trees, including tanoaks, coast live oak, California bay laurels, and many other forest species have been killed by sudden oak death in coastal areas of central and northern California, and Oregon. The pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum, was first linked to the massive tree death in the mid-1990s.
David Rizzo, professor in the Department of Plant...
- Author: Marissa Palin
California forests aren’t natural anymore. Over time, human impacts such as logging and fire suppression have left forests more prone to diseases, insects and wildfires. UC Cooperative Extension received a competitive grant from Cal Fire to launch a forest management training program for private landowners to help protect California’s forests.
There are approximately 33 million acres of forest in...
