Continuing its award-winning work in tools training, the USDA California Climate Hub has designed and delivered a series of workshops focused on the applications of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force’s Regional Resource Kits. The most recent workshop, led by Hub Program Manager Jennifer Smith and Science Applications Specialist Jess DellaRossa, gathered forest managers from local, state, and federal agencies at Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Redding.
The Task Force’s Regional Resource Kits aim to reduce wildfire hazard and increase forest resilience by providing web-based management tools and geospatial data tailored to four regions: the Sierra Nevada, Southern California, the Central Coast, and the North Coast. The geospatial data layers, curated into metric kits, and Planscape, a decision-support tool that allows users to visualize the metrics, were the main focus of the workshop.
Working in small groups, participants completed multiple hands-on exercises that helped them explore the metrics in Planscape and imagine possible applications for the tool. The participants also got the opportunity to ask questions about the metrics and provide feedback on their utility to Peter Stine, a scientist on the metrics’ development team.
On day two of the workshop, participants learned how geospatial data layers, such as those included in the metric kit, can be used in modeling-based decision-support tools to inform strategic planning of forest projects. USFS research scientist Patricia Manley and Alan Ager, a retired USFS research scientist, overviewed the use of the metrics in the USFS’s ForSys tool and walked participants through a case study illustrating application of ForSys to a Wildfire Crisis Strategy Landscape.
“We specifically curated the workshop content to effectively communicate complex topics and provided time for attendees to practice using the data for real-life scenarios,” said DellaRossa. “It was well worth the effort based on the positive feedback we received from the workshop attendees.”