“We all have a strong emotional attachment to the land and so that's the thing that drives us to work hard to maintain it and keep it healthy.”

 For those of us within UC ANR who are actively involved with the Forest Stewardship Education Initiative, this participant's comment comes as no surprise. Participant's in the workshops are highly motivated, driven by various goals and objectives, to manage their forests or oak woodlands. UC ANR's goals are to educate forest landowners to better understand, manage and protect their forests by developing a forest management plan, implementing vegetation management projects, engaging with natural resource professionals, and taking advantage of cost-share opportunities that can help them meet their management goals. After three years hosting seventeen workshop series with over 350 participants, five special sessions, and two additional field days, we wanted to know how successful participants have been and how we can continue to support them.

 In 2021, project PI Susie Kocher, Forestry and Natural Resources Advisor; co-PI Kim Ingram, Forest Stewardship Academic Coordinator; and Forestry and Natural Resources Advisors and project collaborators Mike Jones and Ryan Tompkins, conducted interviews of Forest Stewardship participants to help better understand their concerns and management goals.

Feelings about their forestland: Landowners told us how much they enjoy the plants and animals they encounter and that they don't mind putting in the hours of work required to meet their management goals. They want to keep forestland in the family and often talk about the need for succession planning.

 “We want to be able to pass on to the next generation. They will keep it in the family and keep it open to family members for recreation and just to be there. It's family history.”

Landowner goals and concerns: Many landowners have ecological conservation, restoration, and resilience goals which are driven by concern about wildfire, climate change, drought, and tree mortality. High fuel loads and concerns around pests and diseases were often mentioned in the interviews, which directly reflect their goals around forest health and wildfire resilience.

“We would like to help the forest become more climate resilient, drought resilient, and also fire resilient. We clearly want to manage the forest to prevent that sort of devastating damage from a firestorm-like event or any sort of fire.”

How important are the following reasons for why you currently own your wooded land in California? N=286

What landowners are doing: Interviewees described conducting activities that directly reflect their attitudes about forest management and their desire to improve forest health. This includes activities such as hand thinning, pile-burning and activities focused on water quality or quantity, chipping, commercial or non-commercial thinning, defensible space, road building or maintenance and invasive or non-invasive species removal. Additionally, landowners are overwhelmingly paying for these activities out of their own pockets.

“We have a fair amount of water on the property, so there are a couple of bogs and couple of mud pits that were part of the road system. We kind of rerouted some things around and made sure that we weren't tearing things up anymore.”

Ongoing needs: The most frequently mentioned barrier was the cost of treatments and financial limitations. The lack of an available qualified workforce, having to decide on management activities to undertake with multiple ownership partners, and time were also identified as barriers.

“I'm up there for a weekend and what can I get done in a weekend? Then while I'm also up there, I'm trying to help with chopping wood or clearing blackberry bushes and things out for my parents. So, time became part of that obstacle for me.”

Landowner recommendations: Lastly, we asked participants what they would recommend California natural resources agencies do to help landowners like them manage their forests. They strongly recommended increasing awareness, education and outreach as a way for natural resource agencies to focus their efforts and financial resources around forest management. Landowners also expressed the need for an overall increase in forest and forest management awareness in communities and across the state.

“Ag extension and the forester community, you have such great services and such great knowledge. The stewardship workshop was a huge way of getting that knowledge out into the community. But you know, it just needs to be so much more of a push out into the community.”

Workshop participants learning how to use the California Tree Stick at the Butte Co-hort field day. Photo by Kim Ingram

Click here to read the full ‘California's Small Forest Landowners: Goals and barriers of landowners motivated to manage their forests' summary or visit the Forest Stewardship website.

You may have seen historic photos of Sierra Nevada forests with cars driving between the large trees, or heard how one could ride their horse from the woods into town with little difficulties. Those open forests with fewer trees were highly variable in structure and more resilient than forests of today. But what does that actually mean? Ryan Tompkins, Forestry and Natural Resources Advisor and Registered Professional Forester with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, explains the connection between fewer trees and a resilient forest.

Photo: USDA Forest Service

What is forest resilience? Forest resilience is a measure of adaptability. It focuses on retaining a forest's essential structure and composition to a range of stresses or complex disturbances. In other words, a resilient forest may lose some trees to drought, fire or insect attack, but the mortality rate will not overtake the forest's ability to continue growing trees and provide habitat. Some will die, but many will live.

Today's forests have huge increases in basal area and tree density compared to the historical record. Historically, forests were generally low in density yet highly variable in their structure, with open patches and clumps of trees. Twenty-two trees per acre was not uncommon in the Sierras, but those 22 trees were huge! The older and bigger trees get, the more adaptations they have, like thicker bark, a high canopy and higher levels of resilience to disturbances. We have normalized high density, homogeneous stand structure and high competition forests that would not have occurred historically. Today's forests are more vulnerable to fire and drought related mortality due to a legacy of timber harvesting in early 1900's that focused on large tree removal; a century of fire suppression policy and action, and climate change effects such as less humidity recovery in the night.

Photo: Forest Stewardship Education Initiative Program

What about forest understory? The mosaic effects of fire in historic fire regimes was due to greater understory diversity characterized by grasses, forbs, limited shrubs, and more bare ground. Today's thick understory means a less diverse understory, more resource competition between shrubs and small trees, and greater fuel loads to carry fire throughout the forest. Once impacted by severe fire, it is more likely that shrubs will take over burned areas and overtake any seedlings that are planted or regenerated.

What should today's forest landowners do to increase forest resilience? Aiming for historical tree density may be hard depending on your overall management goals, and the California Forest Practice Rules may not even allow for it. Optimal forest density for your forest depends in part on the productivity of your site and your objectives, but many forest ecologists and managers are advocating for maintaining lower densities of trees. Think about forest structure in two regards: 1) how fire moves through forests during the peak of fire season, and 2) how trees might compete for water during a drought, when considering what management actions to take.

Activities to reduce forest density and increase forest resilience include:

Hand thinning, piling and burning

• This is a good first step for DIYers to remove ladder fuels and some surface fuels;
• Generally, no permits are required if you are on your own property and not using cost-share funding to support the work; and
• It's a nice way to introduce prescribed fire activities if you let the fire in the piles start to creep around, after you put a fire line around them!
• It's a great way to address surface and ladder fuels, but depending on your forest structure may not remove enough competing trees to make your forest resistant to drought

Mastication

• Changes vertical fuel (like small trees and shrubs) down to ground fuel but does not remove them. It simply adds them to surface fuels;
• When masticated fuels burn, they have lower flame lengths but can continue to burn/smolder for a longer time period which can increase fire effects to residual trees;
• It delivers quick results, and can operate most of the year; and
• Decomposition rates will vary between locations.

Mastication plus fire: A combination of treatments that can have unexpected results, both positive and negative. Though flame lengths are low, the fire has a long residence time, which can cook and kill residual trees. It's better to wait a few years after mastication for the material to decompose before burning it.

Timber harvesting or commercial thinning:

• Sometimes you have to commercially thin in order to restore lower density forest conditions;
• You can leverage saw logs/forest products to pay for other management activities; and
• It is effective in reducing tree density in the canopy and ladder fuels and reduces competition for the remaining trees.

Commercial thinning plus prescribed fire: Very effective in reducing tree density, ladder fuels and surface fuels.  Combining meaningful thinning and prescribed fire can mitigate fire hazard and improved the growth and vigor of your trees to maximize resistance and resilience to wildfire and drought-related tree mortality!

For more information on what forest resilience is and how it is measured, read “Operational resilience in western US frequent-fire forests” by Malcolm P. North, Ryan E. Tompkins, Alexis A. Bernal, Brandon M. Collins, Scott L. Stephens, and Robert A. York. Click here to view a virtual panel discussion and presentation with the authors.

For more background on the history of California forests, visit Forest Stewardship Series 4 – Forest History. For more information on tree growth and competition, as well as vegetation management activities, visit Forest Stewardship Series 5 – Tree Competition and Growth. and Forest Stewardship Series 6 – Forest Vegetation Management.

Invasive plants are defined by the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) as, “A plant that is both non-native and able to establish on many sites, grow quickly, and spread to the point of disrupting plant communities or ecosystems.” Depending on the location of your forest or oak woodland, this includes plants such as Scotch broom, cheatgrass, Tree-of-Heaven, pampas grass, and Himalayan blackberry. But for forest or oak woodland landowners who are looking to manage vegetation, there are also native plants that may be less desirable. The NRCS calls these either “Opportunistic native plants or weeds”. Opportunistic native plants, as defined by the NRCS, are able to take advantage of disturbance to the soil or existing vegetation to spread quickly and out-compete the other plants on the disturbed site, such as mountain misery. Weeds are defined as native plants that are not valued in the place where they are growing, or any plant that poses a major threat to agriculture and/or natural ecosystems such as Pacific poison oak.

Photo of Tree of Heaven with flowers

For any landowner, eradication of invasive plants is most effective when the infestation is small or localized. When an infestation covers large areas, you are more often than not, looking at controlling spread versus eradication.

Heather Morrison, a Registered Professional Forester (RPF) and licensed Pesticide Control Advisor, says, “Many times using herbicides in conjunction with other types of vegetation management, like mechanical or burning, can increase the efficacy of the treatments.”

We asked Heather about using herbicides to control invasive species and as a compliment to other vegetation management activities.

Q: Heather, how do you broach the subject of herbicide use with forest landowners?

A: I actually don't treat it any different than any other vegetation management scheme. It is one of the tools we can use and is most definitely a huge part of IPM (Integrated pest management). I present it as an option and if landowners are hesitance, we have a conversation about it. Herbicide isn't always the best choice and every situation is different.

Q: What are some examples where you have effectively used herbicides as a forest management tool?

A: One of the best uses is in shaded fuel breaks. Maintenance is key! People always seem to forget that the forest isn't static and it grows back, so these huge investments we make in establishing fuel breaks can be lost if we don't maintain them.

Another example is invasive plant suppression. Wildfires have been creating the perfect environment for increased spread of invasive plants like broom, pepper wood and stinkwort. The past two years I have been working with some forest landowners in the Glass Fire footprint to suppress French broom which was bad before the fire, and now is even worse. Because new plants take 2-3 years to produce viable seed, it has been a race to try and treat these areas before they release more seed. Broom plants produce thousands of seed per plant which remain viable in the soil for 70+ years!

Photo of scotch broom with flowers

Q: Are there situations where you would NOT recommend using herbicides?

A: Obviously if you are an organic farmer! Mostly what I find is you have to switch up the types of herbicides you use and the application method. Herbicides are very regulated and I like to remind people that we are applying usually only ounces per acre. This is compared to the same herbicides on the shelves where most likely consumers are not reading the label, wearing their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or applying the herbicide correctly.

Please note, the US Forest Service's “Forest Management Handbook” recommends that forest landowners who need to treat more than 1/10 acre with herbicides, should consult with an RPF, Certified Pesticide Applicator, or a licensed Pesticide Control Advisor.

For more information on Integrated Pest Management and invasive plant identification, please visit the UC IPM website.

To read more of our interview with Heather and herbicide application safety, as well as information on other mechanical and physical methods of invasive plant management, download the Forest Stewardship Education Newsletter, June 2022.

To learn more about forest stewardship, vegetation management and forest pests, download the UC Forest Stewardship Series.

Photo of Pacific poison oak with berries 

Forests in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Range are being stressed by many factors that put them at risk. High-severity wildfire, drought stress, insect outbreaks, disease, and a backdrop of changing climate are a few. A significant portion of Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade forests are owned and managed as small parcels (10 to 100 acres) by nonindustrial private landowners. To assist these landowners, CAL FIRE and the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station have recently released the ‘Forest Management Handbook for Small Parcel Landowners.' This step by step guide is an additional resource designed to help small, private forest landowners gather the information needed to begin developing a California Cooperative Forest Management Plan, including determining what, if any, management actions need to be done, and where to obtain technical and financial support.

“California's small private landowners need access to tools and technical assistance to help them manage their forest lands to maintain forest health,” said Stewart McMorrow, CAL FIRE's wildfire resilience staff chief. “Forest landowners do not always have the knowledge or skills to get started with a management plan, which is why the handbook was created.”

Four important areas are addressed in the handbook including:

1. Defining your forest management objectives;
2. Assessing your current forest conditions;
3. Recognizing threats to the health of your forest; and
4. Evaluating possible treatment options.

A California Cooperative Forest Management Plan (CCFMP) can be simple or complex based on a landowner's management goals and objectives. For those ‘do-it-yourself' landowners, the handbook provides worksheets that can help guide you through basic management activities. For landowners with larger parcels, multiple goals, complex management activities, and a desire to participate in cost-share programs (i.e. CFIP or EQIP), a Registered Professional Forester (RPF) is required to complete and submit your management plan. However, the handbook can be used as an important first step to assist landowners and guide conversations with their RPFs.

The handbook can be found here and hard copies can be requested by contacting your local CAL FIRE Forestry Assistance Specialist.

Join handbook authors Stewart McMorrow, CAL FIRE (Stewart.mcmorrow@fire.ca.gov), Steve Ostoja, USDA California Climate Hub (smostoja@ucdavis.edu), and Peter Stine, Pacific Southwest Research Station (peter.stine@usda.gov) for a webinar on April 26, 5 p.m. – 6 p.m. to learn what the handbook offers and to get connected with programs and resources.

For landowners who would like more assistance in understanding and developing a California Cooperative Forest Management Plan, consider signing up for an upcoming Forest Stewardship Workshop series hosted by the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. The nine-week online workshop covers:

• Forest management objectives and planning
• Forest health, insects and disease
• Forest and fire ecology, wildlife, watersheds
• Fuels reduction and forest resource marketing
• Project development & permitting
• Getting professional help and cost-share opportunities

The in-person field day covers silviculture, forest inventory and mapping activities. Participants who complete the workshop will be eligible for a free site visit with a California Registered Professional Forester.