Risk Management for a Fiery Future
In northern California, it is no longer a question of if fire will reach the coastal forests, it is a question of when. Cal Poly faculty and students are working on research critical to preparing for a fiery future.
Assistant Professor Richard Cobb is studying the efficiency of various methods used to reduce the impact of wide-scale fires. He was recently awarded a $184,400 California State University Agricultural Research Institute grant to further that research. Cobb and several students will employ various forest-treatment methods, such as forest thinning and reducing excess vegetation through mulching at the Soquel Demonstration Forest in Santa Cruz County, over the next several years to help identify the cost-benefit tradeoffs of the various approaches.
This research is all-encompassing and builds on years of work done in other parts of the state. What we have found is that doing something is better than doing nothing — we are now determining what to do where.— Richard Cobb
“Mitigation of fire and greenhouse gas emissions in coast range forests are key to securing the long-term economic resiliency in California, where most of the population relies directly or indirectly on fire-safe conditions to maintain public safety and healthy air,” Cobb said. “However, treatments have yet to be applied at the scale of fuels accumulation in coastal range forests.”
The goal is to provide clear data on the effectiveness of these methods in controlling fuels and mitigating disease impacts in the forests, which is the most pressing issue facing the sustainability of coastal forests. The research builds upon years of work done prior in Humboldt and Marin counties by Cobb and his students.
Recent graduate Gissella Quiroga (Forestry and Natural Resources and Environmental Management and Protection, ’21) focused her research on treatments applied to the coastal forests in Humboldt County and found that forest fuel and disease mitigation techniques were effective without negatively impacting stored carbon. Quiroga now works as a forestry aide for Cal Fire and will present her research at the Society of American Foresters annual convention.
“This research is all-encompassing and builds on years of work done in other parts of the state,” Cobb said. “What we have found is that doing something is better than doing nothing — we are now determining what to do where.”
The challenges include costs; effectively reducing excess fuels on an acre of forest land can cost more than $10,000. Machinery, hand-crews and prescribed burns are costly, so understanding the economic feasibility of each of the methods is essential in making it a viable option for preparing California forests in a time when natural resources management is stretched thin, Cobb said.
“Everything we do is focused on mitigating risk,” he said. “A person doesn’t even have to live in California to understand that we have a wildfire problem. Everybody has a stake in this — both from a public safety standpoint as well as the impacts on our agricultural commodities.”
Visit Cultivate Fall 2021 to read more stories.