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Fire has always been a part of life in southern California. Climate change and current fire management practices have led to catastrophic losses and impacts to human health, infrastructure and ecosystems, as seen, for example, in the 2018 Montecito debris flow. Indigenous wisdom instructs that rather than suppressing fire, we should seek to be in good relationship with fire. This project centers the voices of Chumash people by revitalizing their good relationship with fire in Chumash homelands. This revitalization comes at a critical time for both fire management and revitalization of Indigenous cultural burning practices in the southwest. The project will enable the recovery and documenting of Chumash knowledge...
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Indigenous knowledge systems, such as traditional ecological knowledge, contain climate observations and adaptation strategies reaching back millennia. These include methods for caring for our natural resources and relations, such as through drought resilient agriculture, soil, and water management practices. Despite a growing global recognition among researchers and resource managers of the value of Indigenous knowledges and practices for enhancing human capacity to adapt to climate change impacts, we face historic inequities that hinder cross-cultural knowledge exchange and innovation. This includes a tendency towards extractive research, accessing Indigenous knowledges without regarding Indigenous decision-making...
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Wildfire is a natural and essential process in forest ecosystems, but characteristics of fire regimes that have shaped these landscapes over long time scales are changing with climate change and human activities. In some places, changes in fire size, frequency, and severity threaten to degrade essential ecosystem services that produce clean air and water, fertile soil for crop and wood production, and habitat for plant and animal species. Hence, it is urgent to understand how both our actions and inactions contribute to the vulnerability of forest ecosystems and to develop management practices that help sustain and conserve vegetation and wildlife communities in vulnerable forest systems. Our project will address...
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Stream flow is directly tied to climate, and numerous studies provide substantial evidence that climate change is a threat to future aquatic water flow processes. In the southwestern United States, mountain snow is a primary water source for streams and rivers. However, climate change is threatening the region's mountain snow, leading to reduced snowpack, earlier snowmelt, and more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow. These effects can change the timing, quality, and amount of water flowing in aquatic systems, creating challenges for natural resource managers. The goal of the proposed project is to synthesize existing research and management plans to identify misalignments between aquatic flows and the...
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Millions of acres of California’s forest cover have been lost due to severe wildfire and drought mediatedinsect outbreaks. These acres may not grow back as forests without management action, which could negatively impact carbon sequestration, access to clean drinking water, wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities. Various factors, including limited regeneration potential, hotter and more extreme climatic conditions, and the threat of reburning hinder forest recovery. In recent year researchers have developed numerous tools and resources to help forest managers prioritize where to reforest, and how to implement climate-adaptive strategies. However, forest managers lack the time and resources to review each...
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The quantity and availability of weather- and climate-related data has grown dramatically over the past decade due in part to improvements in computing speed, internet bandwidth and data visualization tools. Ideally, these improvements should help information reach experts in the relevant domain and inform decision making, leading to better weather- and climate-related decision-making and risk management. Decision support tools (DSTs) often serve as the intermediary between raw data and actionable information and decision making. The design of these DSTs is critical to ensure they present actionable information for a wide variety of potential users. This can lead to mis-specified tools with a ‘one size-fits no one’...
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The complex challenge of adapting to climate changerequires collaborative solutions that can be enhanced by connecting individuals to each other and to essential information. This project will evaluate the effectiveness of online decision information tools designed to aid adaptation, that are supported by the development of a network of practice. Networks can aid adaptation by improving the quantity and quality of professional relationships, mobilizing leadership, enhancing the flow of information and generating more actions that lead to adaptation breakthroughs. Many new networks in the Southwest have developed online tools to inform adaptation planning and natural resource management. In this project, we will...
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In ecosystems characterized by flowing water, such as rivers and streams, the dynamics of how the water moves - how deep it is, how fast it flows, how often it floods - have direct effects on the health, diversity, and sustainability of underlying communities. Yet increasingly, climate extremes like droughts and floods are disrupting fragile stream ecosystems by specifically changing their internal aquatic flows. Human infrastructure, such as irrigation and dams, further disrupt these dynamics. These changes in climate and land use are leading to teh fragmentation of aquatic habtiat, degraded water quality, altered sediment transport processes, variation in the timing and duration of floodplain inundation, shifts...
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Climate Change is making our environment unpredictable. Increased persistence of drought is causing deaths of plants and animals across our landscapes. However, drought amongst the western United States is not a new thing. Native American populations have been living with drought since time immemorial and practiced culturally prescribed fire practices to foster the landscape for an environment that provides resources for tribal livelihoods and traditional practices (Marks-Block et al. 2019). The United States Geologic Survey and the Yurok Tribe are partnering to study the effects of prescribed burns actively occurring in Yurok Ancestral Territory. Prescribed burns promote a healthy ecosystem through positively...
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Fires are becoming more extensive and severe in the West, and post-fire recovery is a challenge for communities as they adapt to a changing climate. Post-fire management can involve watershedrehabilitation, recovering valuable trees, and replanting to prevent forest loss and damage to watersheds. Land management agencies that make decisions may prioritize goals that differ from those of local populations--especially Native American Tribes, who may focus primarily on recovering non-timber values, such wetlands or species that provide food, fiber, or medicine, on their reservations and on their ancestral homelands. The goal of this research is to inform post-fire management and policy, so it is more responsive to...
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Increasing wildfire activity in the western US poses profound risks for human communities and ecological systems. Recent fire years are characterized not only by expanding area burned but also explosive fire growth. In 2020, several fires grew by >100,000 acres within a 24-hour period. Extreme single-day fire spread events such as these are poorly understood but disproportionately responsible for wildfire impacts: just the top 1% of fire spread events account for 20% of annual area burned. Extreme events are linked to warmer and drier conditions, and we project that their frequency could double under future climate. Extreme fire spread events defy suppression and overcome traditional fuels reductions treatments,...
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Across the Navajo Nation, the negative effects of climate change are impacting soil and vegetation management practices to the detriment of ecosystem function, human health, cultural resiliency, and economic well-being. Conducting ecosystem restoration and shifting land management practices are critical elements of climate adaptation and dust mitigation strategies for the Navajo Nation. However, barriers to restoration exist. Restoration in drylands is incredibly difficult and nuanced, requiring the use of appropriate technologies, integration of multiple types of knowledge, appropriate high-quality locally-adapted native plant materials, and environmental professionals skilled in the techniques of dryland restoration...
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The Southwest Fire Climate Adaptation Partnership (SW FireCAP) is working to advance fire and climate adaptation in the southwestern U.S. Focused on cross-organizational collaboration and leveraging resources, the partnership facilitates climate adaptation planning by “sharing Indigenous and Western knowledge perspectives, being inclusive, and building trust.” The Collaborative Conservation and Adaptation Strategies Toolbox (CCAST) is a similar effort, established to document effective conservation initiatives and develop decision-support tools. Both initiatives are focused on showcasing high quality science-to-policy research and innovative, on-the-ground conservation management practices and promoting peer-to-peer...
    map background search result map search result map Climate MicroApps: Assessment and Innovation in Climate Decision Support Tools for Land Managers Assessing Vulnerability of Vegetation and Wildlife Communities to Post-Fire Transformations to Guide Management of Southwestern Pine Forests and Woodlands The Importance of Forests for All People: Understanding Forest Recovery Priorities, Management Options, and Policy Needs for Tribes in Post-Fire Landscapes Evaluation of Network Tools to Advance Climate Adaptation in the Southwest Cycles of Renewal: Returning Good Fire to the Chumash Homelands Improving Water Resilience and Availability Through Culturally Prescribed Fires as a Management Tool on Yurok Tribal Lands Uniting Western Restoration Strategies and Traditional Knowledge to Build Community Capacity and Climate Resilience on the Navajo Nation California Reforestation Management Toolshed: A Web-Based Dashboard of Integrating Existing Resources Understanding Extreme Wildfire Events to Manage for Fire-Resistant and Resilient Landscapes Shifting from Extractive to Self-determined: Enhancing Indigenous Research and Data Governance in Southwest Climate Adaptation Initiatives Promoting Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Exchange on Climate and Fire Adaptation in the Southwestern United States Future of Aquatic Flows: Towards a National Synthesis of Streamflow Regimes Under a Changing Climate Future of Aquatic Flows: Endangered streams: Understanding misalignments between aquatic flows and management strategies to inform adaptation efforts Uniting Western Restoration Strategies and Traditional Knowledge to Build Community Capacity and Climate Resilience on the Navajo Nation Cycles of Renewal: Returning Good Fire to the Chumash Homelands Climate MicroApps: Assessment and Innovation in Climate Decision Support Tools for Land Managers California Reforestation Management Toolshed: A Web-Based Dashboard of Integrating Existing Resources Understanding Extreme Wildfire Events to Manage for Fire-Resistant and Resilient Landscapes Shifting from Extractive to Self-determined: Enhancing Indigenous Research and Data Governance in Southwest Climate Adaptation Initiatives Assessing Vulnerability of Vegetation and Wildlife Communities to Post-Fire Transformations to Guide Management of Southwestern Pine Forests and Woodlands Future of Aquatic Flows: Endangered streams: Understanding misalignments between aquatic flows and management strategies to inform adaptation efforts Promoting Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Exchange on Climate and Fire Adaptation in the Southwestern United States The Importance of Forests for All People: Understanding Forest Recovery Priorities, Management Options, and Policy Needs for Tribes in Post-Fire Landscapes Evaluation of Network Tools to Advance Climate Adaptation in the Southwest Future of Aquatic Flows: Towards a National Synthesis of Streamflow Regimes Under a Changing Climate