Returning Fire to the Landscape
Mendocino Prescribed Fire and Fuels Management Strategy
The Mendocino National Forest is implementing a large landscape-level analysis to address fuel loading and improve forest health and resilience.
Individual strategic projects will use low to moderate intensity surface fires and hazardous fuels reduction treatments to decrease the probability of extreme wildfire behavior and restore ecosystem functions.
Wildfire Intensity Is Increasing
The increasing frequency and severity of wildfires poses a significant threat to California’s ecosystems. In recent years the Mendocino National Forest has experienced unusually severe and devastating fire seasons.
Over 900,000 acres of the Mendocino National Forest burned from the 2018 Ranch Fire and 2020 August Complex. That means 88% of the forest has burned within three years.
While the forest has experienced large wildfires in the past, for example, the 2012 Mill Fire and the North Pass Fire, the number of acres burned just doesn't compare to the fires seen in Northern California in recent years.
Mendocino National Forest Fire History
This dashboard shows average fire footprint size in acres over the years on the Mendocino National Forest.
ArcGIS Dashboards
Conditions that contributed to the Ranch Fire and the August Complex were the result of decades of fire suppression—an over-abundance of smaller trees and ladder fuels, thick undergrowth, dense canopies and a heavy fuel loading of dead and downed debris.
Stressors like drought, pests and pathogens make ecosystems more vulnerable to disturbances like fire.
Rust-colored needles in this dense forest stand indicate bark beetle infestation in one of our few remaining unburned areas near Kingsley Glade.
August Complex (black outline) and Ranch Fire (orange outline) perimeters on the Mendocino National Forest
Fire-resilient Landscapes
These ecosystems were previously fire-resilient landscapes, shaped by frequent low to moderate intensity wildfires.
Fire provides a physical function to the system as important as water, geology, climate, air, and space. Animals and plant life have evolved to adapt and sustain themselves through these processes.
Forest managers on the Mendocino National Forest want to return and maintain fire on the landscape in a way that improves forest health and helps mitigate risk from future large, catastrophic wildfires.
Addressing Fuel Loads Is Key
One of the largest effects from decades of fire suppression is increased fuel loading. More vegetation on the landscape increases the amount of combustible material in wildfires. In this altered forest structure, wildfires can dramatically increase in intensity, severity and size. Given that the fire interval has recently been altered by the Ranch and August Complex fires, there is still a significant amount of vegetation that needs to be addressed. The fires burned 88% of the landscape but have now introduced of other fine fuels stacked against and under the already fire-weakened fuels. This adds another dynamic increase of fuel loading and could alter fire intensity if given the right alignment with fuels, weather and topography.
In addition, fuels provide a "ladder" or physical structure for fire to climb from the forest floor into the canopy, killing mature trees as fire spreads from crown to crown.
View from Black Butte Summit after the August Complex. USDA Forest Service photo by Ryan Mikulovsky.
The Strategy
Mendocino National Forest signed a decision on a multi-phase, forest-wide prescribed fire and fuels management strategy.
Learn more about the scoping, analysis and decision documents on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) website.
With this decision, forest managers can use prescribed fire with manual and mechanical treatments to reduce the build-up of hazardous fuels (e.g., grasses, brush, small-diameter trees, downed trees and woody debris).
Treatments will be phased over time (up to 20,000 acres treated per year), targeting overly dense forest underbrush and small trees before and after wildfires. Prescribed fires will be applied at varying intensities, sizes, frequencies, seasons and places. Manual and mechanical fuels-reduction tools will be utilized to help facilitate the preparation of burning or reach desired vegetation conditions. The long-term project would improve and retain ecosystem health and resilience across the forest.
As part of the planning process, the environmental assessment focuses on
- Reducing wildfire risk to life and property in the wildland-urban interface, and
- Restoring and maintaining forest, shrubland and grassland health and resilience to catastrophic wildfire.
Condition-based Management
Due to the large variability of conditions across the landscape, prescriptions of treatments will depend on several factors, including terrain, fire severity, desired conditions and ecology. Projects under the forest-wide prescribed fire and fuels management strategy will be screened pre-implementation to assess the current environmental conditions. This approach is called condition-based management.
Condition-based management allows managers to make decision with the flexibility to respond to changes in on-the-ground conditions and confirm the right treatment is prescribed and conducted at the right time. This is important because site conditions may change by the time management activities are implemented; they may change rapidly due to disturbance, or a certain order or timing of implementation may be needed. With the focus on conducting the right treatment(s) for the current condition, more precise implementation choices can be made, and there is more certainty in meeting the project’s purpose and need. Taking this approach allows forest managers to meet today’s need of landscape-scale treatments at a pace and scale that will make a positive difference.
Constraints are put in place to protect heritage and natural resources. Some of the major constraints include the exclusion of treatments within Wilderness Areas and 100-acre nest groves (for the endangered Northern Spotted Owl). Also, treatments like thinning to reduce fuels are limited to small trees, up to 12 inches in diameter. No new roads or landings will be constructed under the strategy.
One way to understand the condition-based management approach is to look more closely at the first project area proposed in the environmental assessment, the Upper Thomes Creek Watershed.
One of the high severity burn areas within Upper Thomes watershed. USDA Forest Service photo by Laura Leidner.
The following is an excerpt from the Implementation Plan which can be found in full in the Final Environmental Assessment, Appendix G .
The Upper Thomes Creek Watershed was chosen as the first implementation location for this project because it exhibits a wide range of conditions on the forest:
- High-severity burn areas
- Low to moderate severity burn areas
- Unburned, green patches
- Wildland urban interface: interspersed private property and Paskenta community located directly east
Prior to the 2020 August Complex, a number of projects have been focused within this watershed; mastication, thinning, pile-and-burning along 24N01 and 24N04 (Tatum Ridge). While the August Complex burned up some of the vegetation, the area now has standing dead trees (that are slowly coming down with each winter) and tree mortality due to insect infestation.
The wildfire crisis is not just on National Forest System (NFS) lands but crosses the borders of all jurisdictions. Although this implementation plan only applies to NFS lands, the MNF is embracing work across boundaries with private, tribal, county, and state partners to make the greatest impact within the wildland urban interface. In collaboration with Tehama County’s Resource Conservation District (RCD) and Crane Mills, a grant has been awarded for a third year in the row to treat 3,244 acres of conifer forest, chaparral lands, and grassland meadows.
The proposal calls for several types of treatment, including fuels reduction, prescribed fire, strategic fuel breaks, and reforestation. Methods would include mastication, mechanical and manual thinning, broadcast burning, pile burning, and manual planting of conifer saplings (on non-Forest Service lands only). Currently, there is a significant number of dead and dying trees in the project area due to the August Complex, as well as increased insect infestation, and drought conditions. This creates significant fuel loading and consequently, an increased risk for future wildfires and stand conversion. The proposal would address these management needs and improve habitat for wildlife and aquatic species while supporting biodiversity. Future work in collaboration with Crane Mills could include fuel breaks along (east-west ridges) Valentine, Ragland, and Riley Ridges within the Upper Thomes Creek Watershed.
Roadside treatments have been identified along strategic roads (up to 200 feet on each side). This initial focus will be M2/M22 corridor to connect fuel breaks and other roadside treatments that have already been established by private landowners (primarily Crane Mills). Units have also been identified near campgrounds. A combination of mechanical and manual treatments would be used to achieve desired conditions based on vegetation type and existing fuel density. The total area between the proposal, roadside treatments, and units with campgrounds comes out to just under 9,000 acres. Most of these areas proposed for treatment have been identified under the Postfire Restoration Strategy to have some kind of fuels reduction or maintenance burning. Campground areas will primarily be focused on mechanical work.
The map highlights about 60,000 acres in the Upper Thomes Creek watershed on the Grindstone Ranger District. This area represents a wide range of current conditions on the forest.
The project area is the entire Mendocino National Forest, excluding Wilderness Areas. That totals about 682,500 acres out of over 900,000 acres of the forest. The first location proposed under the strategy, highlighted on the map, is about 60,000 acres of federal and private land in the Upper Thomes Creek watershed on the Grindstone Ranger District. The purple areas highlight proposed Forest Service fuel breaks, and the dark grey areas represent private (non-Forest Service) treatments.
Resource specialists will assess each proposed treatment area within the Upper Thomes Creek before any management activity occurs. The current conditions on the ground will dictate which treatment method(s) are suitable.
Fire and fuels managers will work with other resource specialists to identify the best treatment plan for a particular area and ensure design features, or specific measures to mitigate impacts and protect resources, are in place. More than one treatment will likely be needed in the same area to restore and maintain ecosystem health and reduced fuel loadings.
In preparation for implementation, forest staff have begun collecting field data within the planned treatment footprint to determine if threatened, endangered, and Forest Service sensitive plant and animal species, invasive plants, and heritage resources are present. The aim is to confirm current conditions on the ground to inform what combination of treatment methods and design features would be most beneficial, before commencing operations.
Areas with unburned, green forest have the potential to be northern spotted owl habitat. In those areas it will be critical to manage fuel conditions that promote forest health and resilience to catastrophic wildfires while also avoiding disturbance of owl nests and promoting more habitat.
In chaparral ecosystems, managers would select treatments that would result in a mosaic of mixed age classes to break up large areas of continuous fuels.
Over time, managers would tailor activities to maintain the desired mixed-age class condition, which could mean no additional burning for an extended period time.
One of the benefits of condition-based management is greater flexibility in treatment areas and methods. Conditions on the ground are dynamic, and there is a level of uncertainty when it comes to large-scale challenges like drought.
With this strategy in place, forest managers will be better equipped to adapt to those changing environmental conditions while still being effective in land management.
Collaborations
Collaboration and partnerships are key to this landscape-level project. Currently the Mendocino National Forest has agreements with The Great Basin Institute and the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Southwest Research Stations to conduct pre-implementation surveys and establish long-term monitoring. As this project evolves and expands, we will be looking to strengthen collaborations and partnerships. Collaborations during the planning process include:
- Best available science: Planning and Prioritization after Fire is a collaboration between the Mendocino National Forest, the R5 Ecology Program, and Pacific Southwest Research Station. This postfire restoration strategy pulls together scientific datasets and knowledge from forest managers to understand the status of ecosystem health and integrity across the Mendocino National Forest and to identify short- and long-term restoration objectives and management needs in burned and unburned areas.
- Public engagement: Social scientists from the Pacific Southwest and Pacific Northwest Research Station with FireScape Mendocino hosted a series of public engagement sessions to gather community input on a newly developed Mapping, Planning, Prioritization and Public Participation Tool (also called M3P). Application of this public input can include demonstrating public support for wildfire risk reduction actions and helping to determine future locations for strategic actions.
- Tribes: Local tribes and forest staff are working together to reintroduce cultural and tribal burning practices that both restore fire to promote plants important to the tribes as well as protect sacred cultural sites.
How You Can Get Involved
Public involvement is vital to the success of the forest-wide prescribed fire and fuels management strategy.
There will be designated timeframes when feedback will be most useful, particularly as new treatment areas and activities are proposed. These timeframes will be posted on the Mendocino National Forest website and social media.
Additionally, the FireScape Mendocino collaborative provides public engagement opportunities through workshops and field visits to Mendocino National Forest and surrounding communities. Future events will be shared on their website, https://www.firescapemendocino.org/ .
You can reach out to Mendocino National Forest at any time with questions or input about this strategy using the form below.
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