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Project ID:

24-1-01-14

Year:

2024

Date Started:

09/01/2024

Date Completed:

Title:

Effects of post-wildfire resprouting on forest structure to inform future fuels management

Project Proposal Abstract:

1. Problem Statement
Wildfires are becoming more destructive in California as a result of climate change and historic fire suppression policies. Fifteen of the twenty most destructive wildfires in Californias history have occurred since 2015 and five of those occurred in Sonoma County (CALFIRE, 2023). The California Bay Laurel (Umbellularia californica) is a dominant tree species throughout coastal Northern California (including Sonoma County) that demonstrates prolific basal resprouting post-wildfire (Ackerly et al. 2019). In some areas, U. californica resprouts are so substantial that land managers at local preserves (Pepperwood and Saddle Mountain) report serious concern about ladder fuels as well as future forest structure changes caused by this regrowth. Despite this, efforts to manage U. californica are limited because field based measurements are challenging to obtain and difficult to verify.

2. Objectives
My GRIN research will address the following questions: 1) What is the effect of fire severity on U. californica resprouting aboveground biomass (AGB)? 2) How effective are current methods for estimating resprouting AGB? I hypothesize that 1) U. californica resprout AGB increases significantly with increasing fire severity, and 2) allometries derived from terrestrial LiDAR data will greatly improve resprout AGB estimates using field measurements. I will answer these questions using existing terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) data from Pepperwood and Saddle Mountain Preserves in Sonoma County, in plots that burned at varying severity in the Tubbs (2017), Kincade (2019), and Glass (2020) Fires. I will calculate plot-level resprout AGB using these scans to compare across a fire severity gradient. Individual resprout AGB will be used to develop new allometric equations to compare TLS derived AGB to traditional methods (using existing field measurements).

3. Benefits
My GRIN research will advance the fields of forestry and remote sensing by using TLS to quantify the effects of fire severity on U. californica resprout AGB. Additionally, this project will lead to the development of new allometric AGB equations for resprouts and ideally also lead to the creation of a simple measurement tool to quantify U. californica as a fuel source in heterogeneous oak woodlands. This research has broader implications for improving biomass inputs to fuel models and fuels parameterization of vegetation models that are used to examine the effects of fire on forest structure.

I will provide a detailed report of my methods, results, and recommendations to Pepperwood and Saddle Mountain Preserves. In addition to the report, I will share my research in an oral presentation at Pepperwood Preserve. I will also share my findings at the Ecological Society of Americas 110th annual meeting. Finally, I will publish this research in an open-source publication to a scientific journal.

Principal Investigator:

Lisa P Bentley

Agency/Organization:

Sonoma State University

Branch or Dept:

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Agreements Contact	Joy M Sun
Budget Contact	Nicole L Ream	Sonoma State University	Office of Research & Sponsored Programs
Student Investigator	Dawson M Bell	Sonoma State University	Department of Biology