California is renowned as the land of innovation and has a history of building new industries, inventing cutting-edge technologies, and experimenting with novel policies. Our forests and the communities that depend upon them face exceptional risk from climate change and wildfires, and the state’s best hope for reducing these threats is to use this proven capacity to innovate. The Monitoring, Reporting and Assessment Work Group is harnessing innovative sciences to improve our understanding of cause and effect relationships in ecosystems. Understanding the dynamics of forest management and forest health outcomes is more important than ever as California aims to increase investment in land management to deliver on broader state goals.