Study of Blue Oaks for Climate Impacts, Health and Guidance for Central California Land Managers

Billy Freeman, Rangeland Manager, Sierra Foothill Conservancy

A Blue oak study is currently being implemented at the McKenzie Table Mountain Preserve near Prather, California. Data will be used by Sierra Foothill Conservancy and partners to affect broadscale Blue oak woodland management. A field day will be hosted at McKenzie Preserve where livestock producers, landowners, and land managers will engage in Oak monitoring while learning about research outcomes, ecosystem management and regenerative grazing.

This Blue oak study project is designed to support central California livestock producers, land managers and agency personnel in identifying regenerative land stewardship approaches for resource conservation. The project will accomplish this by studying Blue oak species populations and demonstrating the effect of regenerative grazing and conservation grazing on Blue oak populations. The study area represents an ecological site typical of central California Blue oak woodland that is capable of being enhanced by these approaches. Outreach to land manager groups will inform personnel on practices and instruct them on monitoring techniques. A desired outcome is to enable livestock producers to support the bottom line of their operations while accomplishing sustainable ecological objectives. A Field Day activity will provide an opportunity for producer-to-producer networking regarding these ecological approaches and inform about the partnering organization’s role in natural resources stewardship.

An analysis of the monitoring data from the SFC sites will be performed by National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE). These findings will be presented during the Field Day event for producers and land managers. Additionally, the study data will be used by NEON and UCCE as part of other respective research projects. This data is intended to provide a long-term understanding of blue oak populations in the region of Central California. In addition, the work at SFC will empower land managers to monitor blue oak populations with simple and low-cost methods. Data from this project at SFC and other sites, and volunteer trainings, will help to identify and extend land management practices which best support healthy, regenerating blue oak populations.