In the past few years we've had quite a bit of research come out that has helped
us guide how we actually manage the land. And right now we're really looking
at a lot of the research on what we're going do about reforestation and
recovery efforts related to this tree mortality. We've lost over 300,000 acres
of trees and we know that we're not going to be able to put trees back
everywhere on the landscape, it's just not feasible. This level of mortality
is shocking, but people should not be surprised, because our researchers and
our land managers have agreed for quite a long time that this level of density,
the number of trees we have, is out of character with historic forests and
predisposes it to this kind of event. When it comes to restoring forest
structure, we work with scientists who look particularly at what the forest
used to look like, and also what the forest might need to look like in the
future, relative to climate variability. Forests used to be composed of
incredible amount of variation. They were composed of groups of trees, interspersed
with gaps, lots of heterogeneity. We think that structure made the forest resilient
to fire, and it probably also made it resilient to bark beetles. This area
where we're in at about 3,500 feet in elevation was typically a Ponderosa Pine
forest. We know that this forest is going to actually transition into major brush
fields. But without management, we will have chaparral fields just like we see
in much of Southern California. That brush is going to out compete those
trees without us actually physically going in and removing brush continually
until the trees can reach about 30 years of age. We're looking
specifically at what adaptive strategies can we apply now going into the future
to deal with this now very altered landscape. And so, instead of just looking
at, well, we're just going to restore everything, that may be possible but
it is also very expensive and we have limited resources, so how we
prioritize restoration and reforestation. At this point in time everything we're
doing is still public safety. We are looking at the landscape though, and how
we're going to treat major watersheds to work toward reforestation efforts and
hopefully recovery efforts. By knowing more about the physical features of the
the landscape itself and within the ground is where can we plant trees, where
do we think the trees are going to grow best? We want to create a forest that's in
sync, that is compatible with the water availability, as well as what fire would
have created in that forest historically. What does that mean? It means that you
have places in the forest that are denser, that have larger clumps of trees,
that have high canopy cover but they're focused on places where you have a lot
of water availability, so that the trees are reflective of that water availability
and those are places where you can have higher canopy cover and
bigger trees. But if you move to another location that's much dryer, let's say a
Southwest facing slope or steeper ground that doesn't hold as much water, in those
kind of situations you would want to create a forest with fairly-low density,
fairly open, dominated by species such as pine that can deal with the dry type of
forest conditions. We know that it's going to take a lot of work to get there,
but much of the new research we're seeing is going to help us into the future.
One of the things that we're working with the research station on,
that's really important right now, is the identification of areas that we think,
we hope we are going to retain what green little green trees are left on the
landscape. We've had those conversations about how we can protect
those little pockets of green trees. That's going to be our future large tree habitat.
Those are going to be our old growth forests here pretty soon.
We're really working closely with them to define where those are on the
landscape, how we can protect them, how we can grow them, and keep them safe
so we actually have habitat and green trees in the future. What we've learned
from monitoring the mortality in the Southern Sierras, as part of our forest management
activities, is that density matters. How dense the forest is matters relative
to how trees survive this event. If you don't manage your tree
density, if you don't manage in the face of increasing variability, then these
events, unfortunately, will take its toll on our forests. What we've learned now
needs to be translated into action and implementation on the ground. We need
to do that with a sense of urgency. We know that this recovery effort is going
to take a couple of generations. It takes generally 80 years, at least, to be able
to grow big trees. So, you may not see the forest that you are used to, but we're
doing everything that we can and working with our research station,
and our partners and other non-governmental organizations
to be able to get this forest into a recovery state.