PS 33-207 - Community-oriented vegetation buffer development for wildfire protection and biodiversity conservation in the wildland-urban interface

Abstract: Severe wildfire risks and impacts to people and ecosystems are growing in many semi-arid and Mediterranean biomes globally. Such risks and impacts include loss of life, property, and vegetation community changes, which can result in losses of habitat area, critical ecosystem functions and services. Of variables that drive wildfires (weather, topography, fuels), those related to fuels – vegetation cover and configuration – are the primary ones that people can manage. Established fuels management paradigms have focused on forest or shrubland thinning across large wildland acreages, ridgetops and roadsides. Often, public forestry or fire agencies execute fuels management actions with limited community input, and focus on federal and public lands. Meanwhile, wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas have expanded with exurban housing development and grown in population, and losses from severe wildfires have continued to grow.

Here we report on the process and first-year progress of the Landscape Domain component of the Santa Barbara Regional Wildfire Mitigation Program (RWMP). The RWMP is a cross-professional, inclusive and community-driven model for wildfire hazard mitigation, focusing first on the south coast region of Santa Barbara County, California. Breaking from established fuel treatment paradigms, the Landscape Domain’s goal is to conserve and expand vegetated greenbelts with high live fuel moisture (LFM) that protect communities from wildfire in WUI regions, focusing on private and community lands. Instead of thinning, the RWMP carries out vegetation projects oriented toward native habitat restoration and conservation of keystone species, such as coast live oaks (Quercus agrifolia), as protective “natural infrastructure” at strategic landscape locations. Additionally, the RWMP Landscape Domain promotes open space and agricultural land-use conservation, such as orchards and active grazing on rangelands, that maintain high-LFM buffers at WUI perimeters and accomplish fine fuels reduction goals.

The RWMP Landscape Domain employs a hybrid, ecosystems science-based, yet community-oriented and adaptive management model to implement and monitor its vegetation projects. We report on first-year research results addressing questions on (1) where and how local extreme fire weather (i.e., Sundowner winds) poses the greatest hazards for communities, using new fire behavior modeling and regional geospatial analyses; (2) landscape area prioritization for oak habitat restoration suitability, employing geospatial analyses including edaphic variables and land-use conditions; and (3) high-resolution, drone-based remote sensing for assessing vegetation cover and structure before and after actions including restoration plantings. We also present two community-driven project case studies, highlighting accomplishments and challenges of native vegetation restoration-based approaches for wildfire hazard mitigation.