With SB 85 providing $536 million in early action funding for efforts to accelerate forest health, fire prevention and climate resiliency, Cal Fire has awarded $3.03 million for five projects in Santa Cruz County.
Lisa Lurie, executive director of the local Resource Conservative District, said the agency will be permitting, and implementing these projects over the next three years.
Partners include State Parks, CalFire’s Soquel Demo Forest, the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, San Lorenzo Valley Water District, UC Santa Cruz, and private landowners.
Lurie provided these descriptions of what will be done:
Aptos Truck Trail/Buzzard Lagoon Road
(up to 180 acres)
This project will build off the previously completed Aptos Truck Trail/Buzzard Lagoon Road shaded fuel break, one of 35 priority projects in CalFire’s Community Wildfire Prevention and Mitigation Report.
Looking north from Buzzard Lagoon Road, one can see recovering vegetation after CalFire’s prescribed fire work. This shows how diverse an understory can be.
State Parks is the primary landowner, in partnership with CalFire’s Soquel Demo Forest (which encompasses 2,681 acres) and a private landowner.
The shaded fuel break follows the ridgetop roads protecting several rural communities in Santa Cruz County from the risk of wildland fires, but further steps are needed to improve the health of adjacent forests in the Aptos Creek watershed.
The proposed project will move into forested areas next to about 3.5 miles of the truck trail to reduce fuel loads and thin overstocked stands. Reducing stand density is expected to improve radial growth of individual trees resulting in greater long term, live-tree carbon storage.
Fall Creek Truck Trail
(up to 62 acres of 2,390 acres affected)
This project will build upon previous shaded fuel break work along an important fire access road and resident evacuation route on State Parks land between the at-risk communities of Felton, Ben Lomond, and Bonny Doon.
Mixed conifer forest will be thinned to increase defensibility and reduce stand density to improve individual tree radial growth and live tree carbon storage along one mile of the truck trail.
UC Santa Cruz Land Management Plan
The 2,000-acre UC Santa Cruz campus is largely undeveloped “Wildland Urban Interface” land adjacent to the unincorporated town of Felton and the City of Santa Cruz.
Fire risk management plans exist for the developed portions of campus, but the remainder of the land the university owns has largely gone unmanaged since the campus opened in 1965. The result is high fuel loads and coastal ecosystem degradation.
The project will update the campus Land Management Plan, which will provide baseline information on existing conditions, detail specific actions for vegetation management to restore ecosystem health, and create clear priorities for forest health and fuel load reduction implementation on UCSC land that will tie in to regional forest health efforts and student research.
Sandhills Habitat Forest Health Enhancement
(up to 30 acres of 6,000 acres affected)
The Sandhills are a unique ecosystem found only on outcrops of Zayante soils―a poorly developed coarse sand soil that supports unique assemblages of plants and animals that include seven endemic plants and animals found nowhere else in the world.
Oak trees have been thinned, reducing ladder fuels in the shaded fuel break along Aptos Creek Truck Trail. See where the treatment stopped. The goal and function of a shaded fuel break to alter a fire’s behavior and provide a strategic location to not only fight fire but also use as an access route. The treatment focuses on ridgetops, trails, and roads. Typically, shaded fuel breaks are between 10 and 100 feet off of a line. The shaded fuel break is the first phase, with treatment further out into the landscape to follow, to make the forest healthier.
Only about half of Sandhills remain undeveloped and the remaining habitat has been degraded in part due to exclusion of a natural fire regime. The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County has a vested interest in eight Sandhills properties – four fee properties and four conservation easements. The Land Trust has the primary goal of returning fire to the unique Sandhills landscape.
The eight Sandhills properties need varying levels of site preparation for prescribed burns. This includes understory/brush management, ladder fuel removal, and selective thinning, allowing native Sandhill plants species to dominate space.
Due to sensitivity of the habitat, treatments will likely need to be implemented by hand crews with the possibility of using small, low-impact equipment where feasible. The first step is developing a fire management plan for the Sandhills properties that identifies and prioritizes the most beneficial areas and actions for habitat enhancement, then planning, permitting, and implementation.
San Lorenzo Valley Water District Post-Fire Recovery
(up to 182 acres)
SLVWD has prepared and adopted a vegetation and fuels management plan and has identified a suite of projects designed to improve forest health and increase fire resiliency.
The shaded fuel break treatment performed by CalFire started in the Soquel Demonstration State Forest. This picture along Hihn’s Mill Road provides an example of how additional treatment can improve the health of the forest. By removing smaller diameter woody vegetation, it’s possible to increase the vigor of mature standing trees. All vegetation in an area compete for the same nutrients. Reducing the density to mimic historic forest conditions can reduce this competition, resulting in healthier wildlife habitat, greater carbon sequestration through mature trees and root structures, promoting a diverse understory, and greatly reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire.
The CZU fire burned 1,838 acres of the 2,000 acres owned by the water district. In parts of land west of Boulder Creek, the Clear Creek subwatershed suffered high severity fire, particularly on the upper slopes and ridgelines to the north of the creek.
The upper portions of the Foreman and Silver Creek subwatersheds also experienced high severity fire, particularly on the south facing slopes and ridgelines associated with those drainages. The areas of very high to moderate burn severity were previously forest land and are some of the highest priorities for reforestation. Scorched redwood trees on SLVWD lands will likely naturally re-sprout. Stands of Douglas fir and other conifer forests that experienced higher burn severity are included for reforestation.
Successful and feasible reforestation will depend upon site class, slope, and planting crew access. Site preparation for planting may include removal or chipping of dead and dying trees burned by the CZU Lightning Complex fire to clear space for seedlings and seeds.
About 12 acres of eucalyptus is on water district land, and it’s known to increase fire hazard, particularly where growing in close proximity to each other and where shed bark and foliage has accumulated beneath established trees and stands. Some eucalyptus were top-killed during the CZU lightning fire. Removal of eucalyptus and reforesting with native trees and species will improve forest health and increase fire resiliency.
A total of 170 acres in the burned area and 12 acres of eucalyptus trees are proposed for reforestation over the next several years.
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Scheduling will depend on native wildlife needs and ideal weather conditions. For information contact Matt Abernathy at mabernathy@rcdsantacruz.org.
Within the next month, Cal Fire expects to award up to an additional $123 million for Fire Prevention projects and $2.3 million for Forest Health Research projects.
Many of the Forest Health grants were made available through California Climate Investments, a statewide program that puts billions of cap-and-trade dollars toward achieving the state’s climate change goals while boosting the economy and improving public health and the environment.