- Author: Steve Dreistadt
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 initially were introduced as ornamentals, but then used extensively for erosion control along roadsides and in mined areas.
Now throughout California forests, roadsides, and wildlands they are weeds that increase the risk of wildfire and crowd out desirable vegetation. They form impenetrable thickets that invade other vegetation, shade out tree seedlings, and make reforestation difficult. They burn readily,...
- Author: Bill Tietje
Bill Tietje is a UC Cooperative Extension area natural resources specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. He is based in San Luis Obispo.
UC Cooperative Extension's Master Gardeners have received many calls during the past few months concerning the poor condition of many California native oak trees, in both urban and rural landscapes. Many evergreen oaks, including coast live...
- Author: Jeanette Warnert
- Posted by: Susie Kocher
Reprinted from the UCANR Green Blog
Every year, the day after Thanksgiving, Susie Kocher bundles up her children, gathers the extended family and hikes into the Lake Tahoe Basin forest to find a Christmas tree.
“It’s my favorite part of the season,” Kocher said. “Having the fresh, living thing in the house really...
- Author: Kim Ingram
- Posted by: Susie Kocher
Reposted from the UCANR Green Blog
Thinning a forest of woody materials has multiple objectives. It can increase the resiliency of the remaining trees from the effects of fire, drought, pest and disease; it can improve habitat quality for wildlife including watersheds; and it can make it easier for firefighters to protect human lives and livelihoods when a fire is burning. There are several ways thinning is carried out: cable logging, feller bunching, conventional tractor skidding, hand-thinning and piling, and mastication. One of the issues with thinning is the disposal of biomass that is non-merchantable (e.g., branches, tree tops, small diameter trees)....
- Author: Bill Stewart
- Posted by: Susie Kocher
By Bill Stewart, Co-Director, UC Center for Forestry, originally published at http://www.calforests.org/what-twenty-years-of-concerted-public-safety-oriented-forestry-looks-like/ on September 13, 2013
The 2013 Rim Fire that burned across large areas of the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park brought national attention to the issue of how to increase the resiliency of forests to survive wildfires. There is considerable well-documented evidence that fuels are no longer limiting fires in the Western US and that they are getting larger and more expensive to...