CAL FIRE & USFS Investments Confront California’s Wildfire Crisis & Expand Urban Forests
CAL FIRE & USFS Investments Confront California’s Wildfire Crisis & Expand Urban Forests
October 17 – USFS Invests $15 Million to Confront California’s Wildfire Crisis
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) announced $100 million will be invested in 21 new projects to expand work on the USFS Wildfire Crisis Strategy to reduce the threat of wildfire in high-risk areas across the country. $15 million will fund three projects in California helping further Task Force goals of protecting communities in the Wildland Urban Interface.
- Sequoia National Forest – $5 million to reduce wildfire risk to the Breckenridge and Pine Flat communities through thinning and prescribed fire, with wood byproducts going to a biomass facility or the local sawmill when viable.
- Eldorado National Forest – $5 million for hazardous fuels reduction, strategic fuels breaks, and prescribed fire on the Georgetown Divide. The project will also create strategic fuel breaks near residential and commercial infrastructure in Volcanoville and Georgetown, including a high-powered electric transmission line.
- Tahoe National Forest – $5 million to reduce hazardous fuels, create defensible space around six communities, create safe ingress and egress along 6.3 miles of road, and engage at least seven partner groups, including local tribes.
September 20 – CAL FIRE and USFS Award $31 million to 22 Urban Forestry Projects in California
CAL FIRE and USFS announced nearly $31 million in Urban and Community Forestry grants in California focused on urban forestry topics of management, expansion and improvement, education, workforce development, capacity building, and green schoolyards. The projects are intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve the functionality of urban forests, arrest the decline of urban forest resources, address climate change resilience, improve the quality of the environment in urban areas, and increase access to environmental career pathways. All funded projects will directly serve priority populations within one or more defined disadvantaged and/or low-income communities in an urban area.
CAL FIRE Forest Health Research Grant Program: Applications are now open for the Forest Health Research Program which is offering $4 million in research funding through its FY 2024-2025 grant solicitation. These grants will support research that directly benefits landowners, resource agencies, fire management organizations, and decision-makers throughout the state.
CAL FIRE Dashboard Shows Effectiveness of Fuels Treatments on Recent Wildfires
New CAL FIRE Dashboard Shows Effectiveness of Fuels Treatments
On October 10, 2024, CAL FIRE launched its Fuels Treatment Effectiveness Dashboard to show how on-the-ground projects are protecting communities and landscapes when wildfire strikes, a key initiative of the Task Force. The dashboard displays Fuels Treatment Effectiveness Reports which evaluate the impacts vegetation management treatments have on fire behavior and highlight how fuel reduction activities not only assist in suppression efforts but also protect life, property, and the natural resources of California.
Fuels Treatments are areas where fuel reduction activities have been conducted, with the primary objective of reducing fuel loading. Treatments that are considered for evaluation include:
- Treatments that have been completed or have had activities in the last seven years.
- Objectives of:
- Broadcast Burn
- Fuel Reduction
- Fuel Break
- Right of Way Clearance
- California Forest Improvement Program (CFIP) projects with fuel reduction activities (e.g. thinning, pruning, piling).
- Fire plan, Vegetation Management Program (VMP) and California Vegetation Treatment Program (CalVTP) activities completed by CAL FIRE or Contract Counties.
- Wildfire Prevention and Forest health grant-funded projects including work performed by grantees and contractors.
Treatment Effectiveness is the effect a fuel reduction treatment has on fire behavior, ingress or egress, and fire suppression.
Examples of Positive Impact include: assisted with fire containment, ingress/egress, reduced property damage, or changing fire behavior.
Examples of treatments that Changed Fire Behavior include: halted rate of spread, slowed rate of spread, or reduced fire intensity.
Examples of treatments that Contributed to Control of Fire include: used as a primary or secondary containment line, provided ingress/egress for fire suppression personnel.
Emergency Forest Restoration Team Accelerates Caldor Fire Recovery
Caldor Fire Recovery Demonstrates Success Using EFRTs
October 17, 2024 – While non-industrial private forests make up roughly a quarter of California’s forested land, they often don’t have any pre-established funding or plans for immediate restoration after a wildfire. To address this critical gap, the Task Force Action Plan (Action Item 1.14) calls for the establishment of Emergency Forest Restoration Teams (EFRTs) to help small private forestland owners recover their lands. In 2021, three pilot EFRTs were developed in response to the Dixie, Tamarack and Caldor fires. By the end of 2023, the three programs had removed dead trees from 2,500 acres and planted new trees on 1,400 acres. On October 11, a field tour showcased how the Caldor EFRT has enabled the area to restore its natural landscapes, open recreational access and recover economically. These pilot EFRTs are proving successful and there are now 15 EFRT programs established across the state.
Meeting Showcases California's Momentum Toward Wildfire Resilience
Meeting Showcases California's Momentum Toward Wildfire Resilience
October 10, 2024
At the Task Force’s most well-attended meeting to-date, nearly 500 people gathered in South Lake Tahoe (and over 300 joined online) for the Sierra Nevada Regional Meeting. Hosted by the California Tahoe Conservancy and Tahoe Fund, the meeting featured several new tools that will revolutionize how California tracks and communicates progress toward improving wildfire and landscape resilience. Other topics covered included progress being made in the Tahoe Basin and the benefits of landscape fuels treatments to vibrant ecosystems and economically thriving communities.
REGIONAL MEETING AGENDA HIGHLIGHTS
• Director’s Report: Director Wright provided an update on recent accomplishments and investments in the Sierra Nevada and a preview of the 2025 Action Plan.
• Statewide Progress on Wildfire Resilience Efforts
– Interagency Treatment Dashboard
– Core Reporting Metrics
– Treatment Effectiveness.
• State & Regional Presentations
– Protecting & Restoring Tahoe: Tahoe partners shared their progress and priorities for advancing state, regional, and local goals through the Environmental Improvement Program.
– Focus on Wildlife – A Vision for Vibrant Ecosystems: A panel of state and regional leaders discussed next steps for evolving large-landscape projects to promote comprehensive climate, watershed, and wildlife benefits.
– Focus on Recreation – A Vision for Thriving Communities: A panel of regional leaders discussed how Sierra partners are broadening planning and implementation to promote recreation and rural economies.
Welcome & Opening Remarks
• Wade Crowfoot, CA Natural Resources Agency
• Kara Chadwick, US Forest Service
• Serra Smokey, Washoe Tribe of NV & CA
• James Settelmeyer, NV Dept. Conservation & Natural Resources
• Joe Tyler, CAL FIRE
Director's Report
• Patrick Wright, Task Force
Statewide Progress on Wildfire Resilience Efforts
Moderator: John Battles, UC Berkeley
• Alan Talhelm and Emily Brodie, CAL FIRE
• MV Eitzel, UC Davis
• Frank Bigelow, CAL FIRE
Tools:
• Monitoring, Reporting & Assessment Page
• Interagency Treatment Dashboard
• CAL FIRE’s Fuels Treatment Effectiveness Reports
Protecting & Restoring Tahoe
• Kacey KC, Nevada Division of Forestry
• Jason Vasques, Tahoe Conservancy
• Julie Regan, Tahoe Reg. Planning Agency
Focus on Wildlife – A Vision for Vibrant Ecosystems
Moderator: Erin Ernst, Tahoe Conservancy
• Stephanie Coppeto, US Forest Service
• Rachel Henry, US Fish & Wildlife Service
• Rich Adams, CA State Parks
• Rhiana Jones, Washoe Tribe of NV & CA
• Meghan Hertel, CA Natural Resources Agency
Focus on Recreation – A Vision for Thriving Communities
Moderator: Danna Stroud, GoBiz
• Amy Berry, Tahoe Fund
• Stew McMorrow, CAL FIRE
• Luke Hunt, Sierra Nevada Conservancy
• Michelle Abramson, Sierra Buttes Trails
• John Wentworth, MLTPA
Closing Remarks
• Task Force Co-Chairs
Monitoring, Reporting & Assessment
Monitoring, Reporting, & Assessment
on the Resilience of California’s Landscapes
INNOVATE AND MEASURE PROGRESS
The State of California and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), along with other partners, collaborate closely through the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force to track vegetation management actions on the ground, monitor ecosystem responses, and assess progress of wildfire and climate resilience efforts in California’s landscapes. The California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA), CAL FIRE, and the USFS have established monitoring and assessment programs developed to specifically focus on:
● Location and status of vegetation management projects
● Status and trends in ecosystem conditions
● Effectiveness and ecological performance of management activities
These programs are intended to adaptively manage landscapes by leveraging data to inform future investments in landscape health and wildfire resilience. Highlighted here are State and federal-led efforts to track management, monitor trends, and assess ecological conditions across historically fire-adapted terrestrial ecosystems within California.
Featured below are several complementary monitoring efforts being undertaken by these agencies, covering California’s historically fire-adapted ecosystems (forests, shrublands, and grasslands). Together, these programs leverage data and perform assessments to better understand the impact and progress of multi-billion-dollar wildfire resilience programs and other land management occurring across California, providing a more holistic view of change within these ecosystems, and informing future investments in landscape resilience. The highlighted programs focus on different aspects and scales, looking at California’s ecosystems in different ways, from evaluating the impact of individual projects, to understanding how California is changing as a whole as a result of climate change and land management.
TRACKING OUR PROGRESS
The Task Force established the new Wildfire and Landscape Resilience Interagency Tracking System and Dashboard which, for the first time, provides a single repository for recently completed projects across California from over a dozen federal and State agencies to track progress towards targets to reduce catastrophic wildfire and promote healthy landscapes. These data are essential to meet the needs of wildfire incident response crews, inform strategic planning, provide public transparency, and enable monitoring and impact assessments.
Monitoring & Assessment Programs
Leveraging field-based and remotely sensed monitoring data, agencies are tracking ecosystem condition change at the project to statewide-levels to determine how natural resources and public safety are affected by land management action, providing scientific and policy insights to inform adaptive management. These monitoring programs leverage the Task Force’s Regional Resource Kits metrics and data from the Interagency Tracking System and Dashboard.
LANDSCAPE-LEVEL MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT PROGRAMS
These monitoring and assessment programs focus on wildfire resilience and are conducted at a landscape-scale.
The Forest and Rangeland Assessment (Assessment) is a report authored by CAL FIRE’s Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) on a five-year cycle that synthesizes datasets to determine and monitor current trends affecting California’s forests and rangelands. The next Assessment is under development and planned for release by the end of 2024.
Focus:
Assessments focus on forest health, large-scale patterns of timber harvesting, and rangeland issues such as managing the grazing of commercial livestock, threats from development, and impacts of droughts and economic shifts. It also highlights trends in wildfires and climate change. The 2024 Assessment will highlight the major changes taking place in California over recent years, including unprecedented scale wildfires, and record droughts that are impacting millions of acres of forests and rangelands. Past editions of the Assessment have used spatial analyses to define priority regions and landscapes to understand core assets at risk (e.g., in 2010); more recent ones have employed the framework of the international Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators, comprised of 7 overarching Criteria with a set of 50 indicators customized for monitoring the health and status of our wildlands (2003, 2017).
Assessments inform the State Legislature on important status and trends affecting the wildlands of California. The Legislature and the State Board of Forestry use this information to craft new policies to improve management of our natural lands, and to better meet public needs.
Mandate:
Forest and Rangeland Assessment Reports are produced by CAL FIRE in accordance with California Public Resource Code § 4789, beginning in 1979. Assessment results are used by the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection to develop and update a forest policy statement for California.
Who to Contact:
To learn more, contact Chris Keithley, Assistant Deputy Director of Fire and Resource Assessment, CAL FIRE: chris.keithley@fire.ca.gov.
Broader-Scale Monitoring Strategies help answer monitoring questions across a broad geographic area that includes multiple national forests.
Mandates
The 2012 Planning Rule (36 CFR 219.12) requires a Broader-Scale Monitoring Strategy and individual national forest plan monitoring programs. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) evaluates and provides the results of a Broader-Scale Monitoring Strategy at least every five years.
Deliverables
The USFS Pacific Southwest Region released their Broader-Scale Monitoring Strategy in June 2020. This strategy asks 10 monitoring questions related to social, economic and ecological status and trends for National Forest System lands in California, along with small portions of Oregon and Nevada managed by the region.
The first results of the strategy were released on the Broader-Scale Monitoring Strategy Interactive website in April 2024. The website offers a wealth of information with icons to explore each monitoring question and a State of the Region summary with key results. Interactive dashboards and maps allow users to explore trends for specific geographic areas, dates and other topics of interest.
Strategy results use the best available scientific information. Sources primarily include publicly available federal and State field-based and remote sensing data. Trends for each of the 10 questions were interpreted by USFS subject matter experts, state agency partners, and scientific partners with academic and nonprofit institutions. Examples of publicly available data sources include American Community Survey (census data), California Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program, CAL FIRE’s Fire and Resource Assessment Program, and TerraClimate. As well as USFS data including Health Protection Aerial Detection Surveys, National Visitor Use Monitoring Program, Natural Resource Manager databases, and Rapid Assessment of Vegetation Condition after Wildfire.
USFS managers use results from the Broader-Scale Monitoring Strategy and national forest plan monitoring to gauge relevant changes in the ecological, economic and social conditions on USFS lands and explore how management is interacting changes to identify ways to adapt.
Sustainability
The Broader-Scale Monitoring Strategy results and interpretation will be updated on the Forest Service interactive website at least every five years. Look for close-to-annual updates for questions with data refreshed more frequently.
The Broader-Scale Monitoring Strategy is a long-term, living document for the life of the individual national forest plans. As new science becomes available, or new uncertainties are discovered, the USFS will update the Broader-Scale Monitoring Strategy.
Who to Contact
To learn more, contact Stephanie Coppeto, Regional Monitoring Planner, USFS Pacific Southwest Region: stephanie.coppeto@usda.gov.
The WERK project will generate novel, updatable, high resolution, wall-to-wall datasets for California’s fire-adapted ecosystems. Additionally, it will synthesize datasets from other sources to track land cover change and management actions and contextualize statewide ecological condition, disturbance, and recovery. These new data will then be integrated into the project’s follow-on effectiveness assessments to better determine how vegetation management is interacting with wildfire and other ecosystem changes, providing the State and federal agencies spatially explicit, updatable data to continually evaluate how their programs and projects are affecting entire landscapes in the context of environmental variability and extreme events.
Mandates:
The State of California is required to assess ecological performance, impact, and effectiveness of its various programs charged with management and oversight of fire-The State of California is required to assess ecological performance, impact, and effectiveness of its various programs charged with management and oversight of fire-prone landscapes. Among the programs that require these assessments are the Timber Regulation and Forest Restoration Program (AB 1492 [2012]) and various State programs implementing vegetation management for wildfire risk reduction (AB 203 [2022]). Under AB 1757 (2022), the State is required to track progress and measure outcomes of nature-based solutions targets set in April 2024, including several related to fire-prone landscapes.
Resources, Funding, Deliverables:
With significant funding from the State Legislature, the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) has invested in making remote sensing data and analytics With significant funding from the State Legislature, the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) has invested in making remote sensing data and analytics publicly available for use in ecosystem health and wildfire management, along with related public safety and science applications across the state’s fire-prone landscapes. These investments will revolutionize how California utilizes science to track and mitigate the negative impacts of catastrophic wildfire and other events.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) and CNRA are working jointly with NASA Ames Research Center to utilize their supercomputing capabilities to develop cutting-edge remote sensing-based vegetation mapping products, tailored to California ecosystems. Using high-resolution data, this project will establish a thorough and up-to-date understanding of spatial and temporal ecosystem changes across California. The WERK project will create new metrics to monitor the state’s ecosystems and evaluate the impact management actions are having.
The primary data products and analyses include:
Change Detection & Attribution | Maps and related assessments of where wildfires, forest and fire management, restoration, and other disturbance (e.g., drought or insect induced mortality events) have occurred throughout California
Land Cover Classification & Mapping | High-resolution land cover classification maps to improve understanding of vegetation in California
Individual Tree Monitoring | Tree canopy delineation maps using high-resolution imagery
Built Structure Mapping | Polygon representation of structures (e.g., habitable dwellings, accessory structures, and industrial/commercial buildings)
Leveraging these data as well as data from Regional Resource Kits, the WERK project will integrate data on reported and remotely sensed management activity and ecosystem changes (water quality and supply, biodiversity, biomass, etc.) to develop comprehensive, updatable, and accurate accounting and contextualization of statewide ecological condition, disturbance, and recovery. This will include new wildfire severity metrics, improved biomass quantification, improved tree die-off detection and quantification, and impact and effectiveness assessments. Data will be aggregated within and across geographies (e.g., HUC 12, counties, ecoregions, etc.), and analyses will be performed to link drivers of change to disturbance events and outcomes, as well as broader ecosystem condition change. For example, these analyses will enable the State to better gauge how management (fuel reduction treatments, commercial timber harvest, etc.) is interacting with wildfire and other ecosystem changes. These assessments will allow the State and federal agencies to evaluate how their programs have affected entire landscapes – not just within project boundaries.
While data refresh frequency will vary depending on the specific product, it is expected many products will be updated annually.
Sustainability:
These data and assessments will be maintained by CARB’s Nature-Based Strategies to transform the WERK project into an enduring monitoring program and provide new means for monitoring and assessing the progress of California’s wildfire and broader landscape resilience programs. These data will become available starting in early 2026 and will strengthen the State’s ability to monitor progress and outcomes of the State’s significant ramp up of landscape management actions.
Who to Contact:
To learn more, contact Loretta Moreno, Program Manager of the Timber Regulation and Forest Restoration Program, CNRA: Loretta.Moreno@resources.ca.gov.
Project-Level Monitoring Programs
These programs focus on wildfire resilience for which data is collected at the level of individual projects
intended to inform statewide programs.
The California Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program (CPFMP) is a partnership between CAL FIRE and UC Davis to develop and implement a long-term monitoring program for prescribed fire in California. With an expected increase in the amount and complexity of prescribed fire in California ecosystems, it is imperative that implementation be accompanied by monitoring.
Focus:
The CPFMP was created following California’s Forest Carbon Plan (2018) and produces data to quantify the capacity of prescribed fire to mitigate carbon losses from wildfire, improve best management practices, minimize potential negative impacts, prioritize investments, and achieve statewide prescribed fire objectives.
Mandate:
The CPFMP supports the requirement for the State of California to evaluate the ecological and fire behavior impacts from vegetation management activities, including prescribed fire (AB 203 [2022]). The CPFMP also supports Senate Bill 1260 (2018) as well as the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) mandate to enhance air quality and smoke monitoring.
Resources, Funding, Deliverables:
The CPFMP is funded through the California Climate Investments program (Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund) and managed by CAL FIRE’s Fire and Resource Assessment Program. CPFMP measures a multitude of fire effects, including surface fuel consumption, impacts to forest structure, and botanical response. This work services all landownerships in California and provides a scientific foundation to help mitigate public health impacts and ensure management objectives are met as the State advances its goals to increase the pace and scale of beneficial fire.CPFMP protocols are now also used by partners at California State Parks and Save the Redwoods League, among others.
The primary data products and analyses include:
- Monitoring prescribed fire treatment effectiveness, measured as reductions of fuel loading/continuity, and other stated management burn objectives.
- Monitoring prescribed fire treatment effects, measured as changes in aboveground carbon, tree mortality and damage, soil surface conditions, and understory plant species.
- Monitoring selected sites for multiple years following treatment.
- Supporting prescribed fire air quality monitoring in coordination with CARB and local Air districts.
- Delivering stakeholder reports summarizing fire effects to all cooperating stakeholders.
- Where possible, connecting monitoring to specific research questions, across, or specific to, vegetation types.
- Areas previously prescribe burned (maintenance burning)
- Post-wildfire restoration (prescribed fire following wildfire)
- Fire effects by burn season
- Production of peer-reviewed scientific literature
Sustainability:
These are publicly available data and are maintained by CAL FIRE’s Fire and Resource Assessment Program. The program is designed to sustain growth over time in response to the growing demand for data related to the implementation of prescribed fire. This includes new university partners and increased student involvement, additional stakeholders, and updated research questions.
Who to Contact:
To learn more, contact Joe Restaino, Prescribed Fire Specialist, CAL FIRE: joe.restaino@fire.ca.gov
The California Forest Health Monitoring Program (FHMP) is designed to measure progress of the Forest Health Grant Program towards its goals and to provide data to evaluate the impacts of forest health treatments across California.
Sampling and Data:
The Forest Health Grant Program funds large-scale and regionally driven efforts to help ensure forest persistence and increase forest resilience and stable carbon storage. Treatments are generally categorized into five core areas: forest fuels reduction, prescribed fire, pest management, biomass utilization, and reforestation. The FHMP uses field–based plots in treated and untreated areas to measure ecosystem elements that reflect progress towards the program’s goals:
- Forest persistence – reforestation efforts put trees back on the landscape after fire. The FHMP will help to understand mortality of planted seedlings over time and resulting sapling densities in planted areas.
- Forest resilience –Forest Health treatments strive to make forests more resilient to drought, pests, and fire via ecological thinning that reduces competition within the stand. FHMP monitoring plots will detect the magnitude of changes in canopy and understory fuels due to treatment to uncover differences in the outcomes of future disturbance in treated areas.
- Long-term and stable carbon storage – though treatments may remove carbon-containing biomass, they stabilize the carbon stocks that remain. On-the-ground plots quantify the increase in the proportion of larger trees and allow for calculation of carbon stability metrics such as the probability that a tree will be consumed in a wildfire.
- Protected communities – the FHMP recognizes the interdependence of healthy forests and protected communities. Future data collection will focus on the impact of Forest Health treatments in firefighting operations.
Mandate:
Forest Heath Grants are administered by CAL FIRE and utilize Cap-and-Trade dollars as part of the California Climate Investments (CCI) program. All CCI funded programs have mandated reporting and the California Air Resources Board requires that monitoring of Forest Health projects occur for a minimum of 10% of projects for at least 10 years. Sampling for FHMP will begin in spring 2025 and protocols are currently under development.
Who to Contact:
To learn more, contact Emily Brodie, Forest Monitoring Scientist, CAL FIRE: emily.brodie@fire.ca.gov.
CAL FIRE’s Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Reporting (FTER) program is intended to evaluate the impacts vegetation management treatments have on fire behavior and highlight how fuel reduction activities not only assist in suppression efforts, but how they protect life, property, and the natural resources of California. FTER relies on an automated process to overlay new wildfire incidents with projects in CalMAPPER to identify where fuel treatment projects are impacted by wildfire. Identified projects are surveyed and verified by CAL FIRE unit personnel, reports are generated and posted to CAL FIRE’s website, and the information displayed on an interactive data dashboard.
Focus:
The FTER program assesses the effect a fuel reduction treatment has on fire behavior, ingress or egress, and fire suppression. Positive fuel treatment impacts are assessed based on whether the project: assisted with fire containment and ingress/egress, reduced property damage, or change fire behavior. Change in fire behavior is determined based on whether the project halted rate of spread, slowed rate of spread, or reduced the fire intensity. Projects are also assessed on their contribution to control of fire based on whether primary or secondary containment lines were utilized and whether the project provided ingress/egress for fire suppression personnel.
Mandate:
Public Resource Code 4137 states on or before December 31, 2022, the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection shall develop a standardized protocol for monitoring implementation and evaluating the positive and negative ecological and fire behavior impacts from vegetation management projects undertaken by the state, consistent with the requirements of Chapter 387 of the Statutes of 2021.
Who to Contact:
To learn more, contact: prefireplanning@fire.ca.gov
Interagency Treatment Dashboard Shows Progress Toward Resilience
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 10, 2024
California Unveils First-of-Their-Kind Dashboards Mapping Out Fire-Prevention Work to Protect Communities
New tools created by CAL FIRE and Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force simplify data, boost transparency, and help inform wildfire planning and response – adding to the suite of tools the state has created
(South Lake Tahoe, CA) – The Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) unveiled several new tools today to help California track and communicate the state’s significant progress in improving wildfire and landscape resilience.
Key takeaways from the Task Force’s Sierra Nevada Regional Meeting in South Lake Tahoe include:
• Interagency Treatment Dashboard updated to show 2021, 2022 and 2023 data.
• Over one million acres of treatments were conducted on about 700,000 footprint acres in 2023.
• Prescribed fire treatments more than doubled between 2021 and 2023.
• CAL FIRE Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Dashboard is showing the impact of treatments impacted by recent wildfires.
“Thousands of wildfire resilience projects have been completed across California to protect our communities and landscapes from catastrophic wildfire in recent years, and more are underway,” said Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency and co-chair of the Task Force. “Thanks to historic investments from our state and federal leaders, dozens of local agencies and hundreds of organizations are delivering these projects. Now for the first time, we have a dashboard that tracks all these diverse projects in one place and on one map. This enables us to measure our overall progress toward building wildfire resilience across the state and provides regional leaders valuable information to plan future projects.”
Interagency Treatment Dashboard
The updated version of the Interagency Treatment Dashboard shows wildfire resilience work (or “treatments”) for three calendar years (2021, 2022 and 2023). The data, which was sourced from federal, state, local, tribal, and private entities, is now available in a single hub that allows Californians to easily see where treatments (such as prescribed fire, mechanical thinning, and tree planting) have been completed. This information is used to inform firefighting efforts, ensure transparency to the public, and track progress toward statewide goals.
The Task Force released a Beta version of the Dashboard last year with 2022 data. This updated version now includes data for 2021, revised data for 2022, and new data for 2023.
Over 1 million acres worth of treatment work on 700,000 acres of land
The Dashboard shows significant progress on multiple fronts to bolster wildfire resilience in California. In 2023, more than one million acres of treatments were conducted on about 700,000 acres, with many acres receiving multiple treatments such as thinning, prescribed fire, or other practices to improve forest health and community resilience. The Task Force is tracking both “activity acres” – which reflect the level of effort conducted through various state, federal, and private programs – and “footprint acres” – which show the total geographic area treated in a calendar year.
The 2023 data shows a significant increase in acres treated since 2021. The increase is largely due to a significant expansion of prescribed fire treatments, which more than doubled since 2021. These efforts have put the state on a solid path toward meeting its joint commitment with the U.S. Forest Service to complete treatments on more than a million acres by the end of 2025.
The Task Force is committed to increasing the pace and scale of statewide actions to address California’s wildfire crisis. The Dashboard is part of a larger strategy to connect the various statewide entities committed to this monumental task.
Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Dashboard
CAL FIRE also launched a Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Dashboard, which shows how wildfire prevention projects are helping protect communities and landscapes when wildfire strikes. “Utilizing technology, we can now track in real time when wildfires hit areas where fuel treatments have been conducted. We can then go into an area and see how those treatments affected fire behavior, evacuation routes, firefighting efforts and more,” said CAL FIRE Chief/Director Joe Tyler. “This new dashboard is a tool for the public to see how fuels treatments had a positive impact on the firefight and how this work is making a difference.”
“No other state in the country is tackling wildfire resilience at this scale or with this level of innovation,” added U.S. Forest Service Deputy Regional Forester Kara Chadwick, who co-chaired today’s meeting. “From groundbreaking prescribed fire projects to comprehensive data tracking systems, we’re setting the standard for what it means to protect our landscapes and communities.”
The meeting is supplemented by field tours on October 8 and 11, to showcase wildfire resilience projects in the Tahoe Basin. Tour highlights include recovery efforts following the 2021 Caldor Fire, long-term prescribed burn projects in Sugar Pine Point State Park, meadow restoration at Máyala Wát undertaken by the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, and the first new industrial-scale sawmill built in Sierra Nevada in several decades.
“Today’s meeting is a major milestone in our efforts to better document and share our collective progress,” said Task Force Director Patrick Wright. “We will continue to build on our collective momentum to make California more resilient to wildfire.”
The next Task Force meeting will take place in Sacramento on December 13 and will provide a synthesis of the latest scientific findings that are informing California’s approach to address wildfire risks in a changing climate. These findings will be incorporated into the Task Force’s 2025 Action Plan Update.
Sky Biblin, Communications Coordinator
Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force
916-502-6527