University of California, Davis (UCD) is a land grant institution that is globally ranked among the top three to five institutions in the environment and agriculture. UCD brings to the SW CASC skills in research on resource management, tribal law and policy, science communication, and extension. UCD’s John Muir Institute of the Environment hosts both the SW CASC and the USDA California Climate Hub. UCD hosts a suite of federal research partners focused on climate adaptation, such as USFS Pacific Southwest Research Station, USGS Western Ecological Resource Center, USDA National Resource Conservation Service, USFS Center for Urban Forest Research. Terrestrial Resources. In collaboration with federal and state land and fish & wildlife [...]
Summary
University of California, Davis (UCD) is a land grant institution that is globally ranked among the top three to five institutions in the environment and agriculture. UCD brings to the SW CASC skills in research on resource management, tribal law and policy, science communication, and extension. UCD’s John Muir Institute of the Environment hosts both the SW CASC and the USDA California Climate Hub. UCD hosts a suite of federal research partners focused on climate adaptation, such as USFS Pacific Southwest Research Station, USGS Western Ecological Resource Center, USDA National Resource Conservation Service, USFS Center for Urban Forest Research.
Terrestrial Resources. In collaboration with federal and state land and fish & wildlife management colleagues, SW CASC CSU co-PI Erica Fleishman (previously with UCD) continues to explore the impacts of fire, livestock grazing, topography, and precipitation on cheatgrass prevalence in the Great Basin. She has concluded that grazing corresponds with increased cheatgrass occurrence and prevalence regardless of variation in climate, topography, or community composition.
Climate and Fire Outreach. In collaboration with the USDA California Climate Hub, UCD SW CASC co-PI Mark Schwartz is working to facilitate rapid and effective communication of climate science to resource managers in the state of California, with a focus on forest management. Given the 2020 fire year, when over 4 million acres of California’s natural ecosystems burned, there is a widely perceived need to provide rapid response information on (a) prioritization of climate-smart restoration (b) prioritization of building climate resiliency through forest management; (c) provide information on management for drought readiness. Our focus is to work on these three issues. Their approach is to engage with stakeholders to better understand information needs; research what is known about those information gaps and provide rapid response to stakeholders on those information needs.
Traditional Burning as a Climate Adaptation Strategy. SW CASC co-PI Beth Rose Middleton is working to understand and contribute to decision-making and governance mechanisms that facilitate the application of Indigenous fire science as an adaptive strategy. Indigenous traditional burning may be applied singularly, or as a complementary approach with other ecosystem restoration practices, such as thinning and prescribed burning. Focusing on central California, this work supports (1) analysis of policy and governance mechanisms that facilitate traditional burning, (2) a series of collaborative, multi-stakeholder traditional burning efforts, (3) an evaluation of preliminary sociopolitical and ecological outcomes of these burning efforts, (4) a broader synthesis of outcomes that draws upon recent burning efforts by the same team of practitioners, and (5) documentation of lessons learned and best practices. Additionally, our SW CASC post-doc fellow, Nina Fontana, (part of the Climate Adaptation Postdoctoral Fellows Program cohort) is conducting a synthetic research assessment of 1) the state of the science and practice on how climate change is currently affecting and projected to transform fire processes in the Southwest; 2) how projected changes fit within the context of national patterns and trends; 3) the implications of these changes for natural resource management and climate change adaptation efforts in the Southwest, and 4) Indigenous perspectives on the application of fire in the context of a changing climate.