The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection announces that its Forest Health Research Program has awarded $5.9 million to support 15 scientific research studies. The agency says these studies will provide critical information and tools to forest landowners, resource agencies, fire management organizations and policymakers across California. The research projects are expected to produce scientific publications, outreach and education events, and decision support tools.
These projects promise to increase understanding of relatively understudied vegetation types like chaparral, mountain meadows and oak woodlands; strengthen frameworks for evaluating costs and benefits of fuel treatment strategies; and expand cutting-edge tools for forest monitoring and prescribed fire planning.
Six of the awards support research led by graduate students. Grantees include the University of California, California State University, Colorado State University, Desert Research Institute, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and Resources for the Future.
“These grant awards from the Forest Health Research Program are filling critical gaps in our knowledge of fire, forest and other vegetation management,” said Chris Keithley, Cal Fire’s assistant deputy director of fire and resource assessment. “The researchers we support fill knowledge gaps, evaluate effectiveness of management practices, develop new tools and create vital information as we continue to work towards a more resilient California.”
Cal Fire says the Forest Health Research Program was established as part of California Climate Investments to answer important questions that further knowledge in forest health and resilience, impacts of wildfire on communities and the environment, science-based tools that aid in land management planning and best practices, effectiveness of fuel treatments, carbon storage and uptake, and many other topics.
Funding for these grants comes from greenhouse gas reduction funds through the California Climate Investments program and the Wildfire and Forest Resilience budget package.
A complete list of the awarded projects and an interactive map of current and past awards can be found on the Forest Health Research website.
