Advancing remote sensing approaches to measure water yield, identify ecological forest restoration priorities, and promote watershed investment opportunities in fire prone watersheds in California.

ADVANCING REMOTE SENSING APPROACHES TO MEASURE WATER YIELD, IDENTIFY ECOLOGICAL FOREST RESTORATION PRIORITIES, AND PROMOTE WATERSHED INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN FIRE PRONE WATERSHEDS IN CALIFORNIA.

Sponsoring Institution

National Institute of Food and Agriculture

Project Status

COMPLETE

Funding Source

SMALL BUSINESS GRANT

Reporting Frequency

Annual

Accession No.

1016929

Grant No.

2018-33610-28617

Cumulative Award Amt.

$599,477.00

Proposal No.

2018-03175

Multistate No.

(N/A)

Project Start Date

Sep 1, 2018

Project End Date

Aug 31, 2021

Grant Year

2018

Program Code

[8.1]- Forests & Related Resources

Recipient Organization
BLUE FOREST CONSERVATION
171 5th St
Lake Oswego,OR 97034-3029

Performing Department
(N/A)

Non Technical Summary
Forests across the Western U.S. are at a tipping point - overgrowth, a warming climate, drought, and insect infestations have ravaged tens of millions of acres of land, increasing the risk of wildfire and threatening water resources, air quality, communities, homes, and habitat. Forest restoration (the strategic removal of brush and shrubs and the selective thinning of trees to return forests to a healthier state) is a proven, but often underutilized, tool that can decrease these risks while also increasing water quantity. While forest restoration is well known to decrease the risk of severe wildfire, its impact on water quantity in regions such as California are not as well understood. As a result, potential beneficiaries of restoration like utilities do not account for its value when analyzing the cost/benefit of an investment in restoration projects. Without the ability to account for water quantity considerations, utilities often cannot make the economic case to invest in restoration projects as the benefits are too uncertain. We intend to change that through advances in research paired with an innovative public-private financing model that will empower utilities and other downstream beneficiaries to invest in forest health.For Phase II, we propose to continue to develop a remote-sensing-based watershed-scale toolkit for determining water-yield changes following forest restoration in California's Sierra Nevada, applied to a specific project as well as to the larger landscape to identify where opportunities for water-yield gains may be greatest. To create this framework, we will build upon our Phase I work to evaluate the accuracy of existing physically based hydrologic models, compared to results predicted using different remote sensing data for assessing water-yield changes following forest restoration.The purpose of the toolkit is to enable a more comprehensive approach to prioritizing restoration and reduce the uncertainty of water benefits associated with restoration projects. Success for this technology consists of widespread adoption by utilities and other potential customers across California, with the potential to scale to other high-exposure western states. The basic toolkit, which is likely to consist of a visualization dashboard summarizing expected water quantity benefits, can be offered as a free resource to all utilities, water-dependent companies, and land managers with a paid option for more in-depth analysis. The free toolkit will allow a customer to quantify and visualize fire risk and potential for water quantity gains on a watershed level. In order to determine the precise impacts to water quantity as a result of a restoration project in a specific location, the granular analysis option would be required with the customer either hiring our researchers for a consulting engagement and/or moving forward with us to package watershed investments. For those watersheds that would be a good fit for investment, the toolkit could serve as a powerful lead generation device.

Animal Health Component

40%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

20%

Applied

40%

Developmental

40%

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
112	0320	2050	33%
112	0210	2050	34%
112	0612	2050	33%

Knowledge Area
112 - Watershed Protection and Management;

Subject Of Investigation
0612 - Conifer forests of the West; 0320 - Watersheds; 0210 - Water resources;

Field Of Science
2050 - Hydrology;

Keywords

Goals / Objectives
Our overall R&D goal is to develop a customizable and scalable landscape scale water quantity evaluation framework that can be broadly applied to quantify changes in watershed yield following forest restoration across the western US. This framework and associated dashboard will 1) provide a stakeholder engagement tool for non-experts that communicates the potential of forest restoration to result in water quantity benefit and wildfire risk reduction, and 2) enables Blue Forest Conservation to better evaluate opportunities for forest restoration and constrain uncertainty from prediction of economic value to stakeholders. Shifting the remote sensing-based evapotranspiration estimate from MODIS to Landsat will improve the resolution of the NDVI-ET product, improve detection of lighter vegetation changes over smaller areas, and reduce uncertainty of landscape-scale water balance calculations from these spatial data. The web interface will be designed with water utilities and stakeholders in mind, with the goal of communicating water benefits and wildfire risk to non-technical personnel such as governing boards, program managers, and other decision-makers with a wide variety of backgrounds at the very small to very large organizations with whom we work.Technical Objectives of Phase IIDetermine areas of potential water yield enhancement in California using PRISM precipitation data and LandSat NDVI-based evapotranspiration data.Evaluate changes to vegetation and evapotranspiration following historical forest management actions and wildfires on federal and private land in California.Implement the remote sensing water yield assessment for the North Yuba River pilot project. Research if the water utility stakeholder finds the forest water use data (evapotranspiration) sufficiently useful for stakeholders to estimate water quantity gains.Develop an interactive map to communicate water yield enhancement opportunities and wildfire hazard risk covering within California. Collaborate with utility stakeholders to design the optimal data visualization dashboard for communicating forest restoration benefits.

Project Methods
Phase II consists of three tasks and all Phase II activities will be overseen by Co-PI's Nicholas Wobbrock and Dr. Phil Saksa of BFC with research performed by Dr. Roger Bales, Dr. Ben Bryant, and colleagues.Task 1: Develop a statewide spatially-explicit water balance for California to evaluate historical changes to forest ecosystems and water use, and determine where water yield enhancement opportunities exist in the state.This task will combine spatially-gridded precipitation data (PRISM, 800 meter resolution) with evapotranspiration calculated from NDVI (Landsat, 30 m resolution), to estimate spatially-explicit runoff (30 m resolution) for California from 1985 to 2017. The runoff product will be based on a simple water balance equation that assumes long-term subsurface storage is a neutral term:Runoff = Precipitation - EvapotranspirationThe runoff product will be validated for the Sierra Nevada using the full natural flow calculated by the California Department of Water Resources for each of the 12 major watersheds, providing 396 total years of hydrology data for comprehensive evaluation.The spatially-explicit runoff will then be used to determine where in California water yield enhancement opportunities exist. This simple remote sensing approach provides a first order assessment of potential water yield benefits with forest restoration efforts. For ease of communicating water yield enhancement opportunities to stakeholders, initial maps will coarsely be divided into three tiers: High, moderate, and low water yield potential.Additional granularity would be available for specific regions, utilities, and forest restoration projects with stakeholders who have engaged Blue Forest Conservation to develop a Forest Resilience Bond.The products developed in this task will enable Blue Forest Conservation to engage utility stakeholders with a specific forest restoration project and show 1) the potential to enhance water yield, 2) an estimate of the additional volume of water that could be expected, and 3) an estimate of the vegetation recovery rate.Task 2: Implement water yield assessment on a Forest Resilience Bond pilot project.This task will result in the implementation of the remote sensing water yield assessment on the 150,000 acre North Yuba River forest restoration, the initial pilot project of the Forest Resilience Bond. Blue Forest Conservation has been collaborating with the Yuba County Water Agency (YCWA), Sierra Nevada Conservancy, and the Tahoe National Forest supervisor's office as we develop the Forest Resilience Bond for the Yuba Project, all providing letters of support for this application. The North Yuba River provides 80% of YCWA's inflows to the 970,000 acre-foot New Bullards Bar Reservoir which is used for flood control, recreation, water supply storage, and hydropower production with the 340 MW New Colgate Powerhouse. We used the MODIS NDVI approach from Phase I to include a historical water balance in our Forest Resilience Bond proposal to Yuba County Water Agency.We also showed how using the remote sensing assessment can capture local changes to vegetation and evapotranspiration from disturbances such as the Bassetts Fire in 2006, ignited by a lightning storm. The wildfire decreased evapotranspiration by 8 cm the following year within the 2,000 acre fire perimeter, but changes to the water balance were not significant over the entire watershed. Vegetation recovery within the fire boundary is inconsistent and shows why it will be desirable for utilities to monitor regrowth post vegetation disturbance such as wildfire or restoration.The paired catchment remote sensing approach used in Phase I, updated with the Landsat NDVI estimation of evapotranspiration, will be used to determine changes to the water balance following forest restoration treatments during the initial two years of the project. This task will rely on a paired watershed Before-After Control-Impact (BACI) experimental design.Task 3: Develop interactive dashboard for stakeholder engagement and investment.This task will result in a spatial product that uses the tiered water yield opportunity developed in task 1 and overlays the risk of a large high-severity wildfire in California. Annual wildfire risk of forested regions is produced by the U.S. Forest Service from a nationwide fire modeling effort using FSim, which provides an absolute indication of annual fire risk at a point in time. While adequate for characterizing relative risk across space, this metric does not straightforwardly translate to metrics of actionable interest to stakeholders. For example, a 2% annual burn probability may register as relatively minor, but such a probability implies a greater than 50% chance of fire in the watershed over a 35-year period (or 1% over 30 years ≥ 25% chance of fire). Starting with burn probabilities over long time periods, we will explore which metrics are of most interest to stakeholders.Importantly, the fire risk estimates interact with the water yield impact, because water yield is a function of vegetation state, which is both a function of time since treatment and time to disturbance (fire). Therefore, when estimating the expected value of water yield benefits from restoration activities, the fire risk should be taken into account. Drawing on existing process-based modeling frameworks, NDVI time series, and field measurements described in the literature, we will use a generalized logistic functional form and a state-transition model to characterize the vegetation state over time, and in-turn refine the post-treatment water benefits to account for regrowth and fire dynamics. These calculations will be a new contribution to this development space, which to date has emphasized water yield impacts without interacting growth and fire dynamics.All of the spatial information described in this task will be displayed in a dashboard that can be used by Blue Forest to screen and vet opportunities, and to engage stakeholders in understanding the connections between the health of their watershed and the benefits they may realize. The various proposed dashboard features will be explored with stakeholders as we research what visualization layout, data, and summary metrics are most useful for them to make decisions regarding resources and land management, and which are most helpful for champions to communicate the value of forest restoration to their own stakeholders.Besides simply toggling between display of individual spatial layers, we expect the dashboard will have the following capabilities, some of which we will construct in anticipation of stakeholder needs to explore further, and some of which can be expanded during iterative testing:Dynamically adjust display resolution to facilitate regional level exploration, or zooming on a specific watershed.Adjust-single layer input values: For individual layers, users can adjust key input values through manual input or slider bars. For example, a user could enter 10, 20 or 30-year fire probabilities depending on what they found most decision-relevant. Similarly, the user could adjust the marginal dollar value assigned to additional water yield or the discount rate.Create a weighted blend of specific layers: Highlight "hot-spots" as a weighted product of fire risk and water benefits, to assess the where there are synergies in reduction in fire risk and water yield gains, versus where they are in tension.Visualize the layers in context by overlaying on base maps such as contour, terrain, satellite or common maps including locations of cities, water and utilities infrastructures.

Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/21

Outputs
Target Audience:The objective of this project is to develop a flexible, scalable method for estimating changes in water yield from forests following forest restoration and other perturbations, to enable equitable, accurate distribution of restoration costs, benefits, and estimated financial value across all beneficiaries. While the many benefits derived from public, forested lands are recognized by decision makers at the federal, state, and local levels, new mechanisms are needed to sustain those benefits through restoring forest health and providing resiliency as extreme weather accelerates wildfire and tree mortality. The tools and methods developed under this project will be directly applicable to forests in California's Sierra Nevada, to forests across the semi-arid western United States, and potentially more broadly. The pilot Forest Resilience Bond has catalyzed a broad partnership of stakeholders to plan landscape-scale forest restoration over the remaining 226,000 acres of Tahoe National Forest in the North Yuba River watershed over the next 20 years. The partnership includes the Tahoe National Forest, Sierra Nevada Conservancy (CA state agency), Yuba Water Agency, The Nature Conservancy, the South Yuba River Citizens League, the Nisenan tribal community, and other organizations. The partnership has been meeting since late 2018 to develop the organization and management plan. The official Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and press release was held in October 2019.Implementation of planned restoration projects in the North Yuba Watershed are expected to be funded through the Forest Resilience Bond. This program helped to support analysis that has allowed aplan and proposal for the Trapper Project, a 30,000 acre project that is NEPA permitted and requires about $15M for implementation. This is the expansion in pace and scale of forest restoration we hoped for and expected that the Forest Resilience Bond. Changes/Problems:We were granted a one-year no-cost extension for the grant. This was due to 1) a delay in data acquisition and processing from our academic partners, and 2) our pilot Yuba project did not begin implementation of major forest restoration activities until summer 2019. Instead of reporting on the restoration activities impact on the water balance for 2018-2019 as initially proposed, we reported on them for 2019-2020. We completed water balance assessments for the central Sierra Nevada region, and have developed a prototype for our website dashboard to communicate the value of water supply protection and risks of wildfire to potential stakeholders. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Blue Forest staff have been able to enhance skills and collaborate with experts regarding: Hydrologic modeling and satellite remote sensing of the central sierra Web dashboard development Analysis of the North Yuba Watershed that helped motivate a signficant Forest Resilience Bond project Collaboration with academic partners at the Sierra Nevada Research Institute How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?This work helped to support research in a paper for an academic journal that was accepted for publication. Roche JW, Ma Q, Rungee J and Bales RC (2020) Evapotranspiration Mapping for Forest Management in California's Sierra Nevada. Front. For. Glob. Change 3:69. doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2020.00069 This work also has produced an interactive dashboard that will be a useful engagement tool for project development and the many stakeholders who weigh in on forest management. The products developed in this task are already enabling Blue Forest Conservation to engage utility stakeholders with a specific forest restoration project and show 1) the potential to enhance water yield, 2) an estimate of the additional volume of water that could be expected, and 3) an estimate of the vegetation recovery rate. We have completed this analysis for our second potential Forest Resilience Bond pilot in the Eldorado National Forest, on the South Fork of the American River. Regrowth rates in this region indicate the need to maintain treatments 10-20 years after initial restoration activities to maintain the runoff benefits. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is considering three forest restoration projects to participate in, and we have calculated the potential for a decrease in forest evapotranspiration over a decade with the prescribed activities for each project (Figure 4). Using the large wildfire areas provides a better ability to produce a range of potential evapotranspiration responses. Finally, we shared the results of this work in a conference presentation at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting of 2021. Maurer, T. et al. 2021. The Yuba Forest Resilience Bond: A model for using Earth Observation (EO) data to drive investment in headwater management, AGU Fall Meeting. https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm21/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/967446 What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Task 1: We have combined spatially-gridded precipitation data (PRISM, 800 meter resolution) with evapotranspiration calculated from NDVI (Landsat, 30 m resolution) to estimate spatially-explicit runoff (30 m resolution) for California from 1985 to 2017 (Figure 1). The runoff product is based on a simple water balance equation that assumes long-term subsurface storage is a neutral term:Runoff = Precipitation - Evapotranspiration We use 34 years of historic wildfire perimeters and burn severities to assess the impact of vegetation change and recovery following disturbance on forest water use. We estimate that forest restoration activities result in similar impacts as low-burn-severity fires. The spatial coverage of historic wildfires provides a broad depiction of regional and regrowth response across elevations and initial vegetation conditions. Thus, in each watershed, we were able to estimate the impacts of vegetation management on evapotranspiration and runoff by elevation band (500 m resolution) and initial evapotranspiration (100 mm resolution).We have validated the runoff product for the 13 major river basins of the Sierra Nevada using the full natural flow calculated by the California Department of Water Resources, providing 442 total years of hydrology data for comprehensive evaluation. The spatially explicit patterns of reductions in forest water use following disturbance were then used to determine where in California water yield enhancement opportunities exist. To a first-order estimate, the northern and central Sierra Nevada basins provide the most potential for water yield benefits with forest restoration efforts. Task 2:The first year of restoration was in water year 2019, so the Task 2 water yield analysis of the restoration project from the original 2018-2019 timeframe to 2019-2020 with the granted one-year no-cost extension of the grant. Vegetation change detected by NDVI was processed for 2019 and 2020; however, 2020 PRISM precipitation data has not yet been released to calculate the latest annual water balance. Blue Forest has periodically visited the project site to provide tours and observe the implementation of restoration activities. The 2019 water year showed a limited evapotranspiration response (Figure 6a), given that the timing of the treatment activity occurred late in the water year (ending September 30). However, the 2020 water yield provided the first significant indication of water balance response to treatments, showing that monitored results are consistent with projections. Some treatment areas have seen upwards of 100mm reduction in forest water use. Initial results of historical water balance and wildfire impacts have been peer-reviewed and published in the Frontiers in Forests & Global Change journal. Task 3:We have completed thedashboard for the 13 Sierra Nevada basins, incorporating partner and stakeholder feedback. During the design phase, we followed existing guidelines for digital product development, including: 1) static mock-ups, 2) discussions about how the content would be produced, 3) technical implementation, and 4) coding the tool with JavaScript and HTML/CSS. This ensured a scalable and sustainable tool that we can continue to improve with additional utility feedback. The spatial product presented in the dashboard uses the tiered water yield opportunity developed in Task 1 and overlays the risk of a large high-severity wildfire in California. Annual wildfire risk of forested regions is produced by the U.S. Forest Service from a nationwide fire modeling effort using FSim, which provides an absolute indication of annual fire risk at a point in time. While adequate for characterizing relative risk across space, this metric does not directly translate to metrics of interest to stakeholders. For example, a 2% annual burn probability may register as relatively minor, but such a probability implies a greater than 50% chance of fire in the watershed over a 35-year time horizon (or 1% over 30 years ≥ 25% chance of fire). This is a much more relevant and significant risk that may motivate stakeholders. Starting with burn probabilities over longer time periods, we explored which metrics are most of interest to stakeholders.

Publications

Type: Websites Status: Under Review Year Published: 2021 Citation: https://blueforest.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=33801477c2024ca1a647acef987b463f
Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Roche JW, Ma Q, Rungee J and Bales RC (2020) Evapotranspiration Mapping for Forest Management in Californiaâ¿¿s Sierra Nevada. Front. For. Glob. Change 3:69. doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2020.00069

Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20

Outputs
Target Audience:The objective of this project is to develop a flexible, scalable method for estimating changes in water yield from forests following forest restoration and other perturbations, to enable equitable, accurate distribution of restoration costs, benefits, and estimated financial value across all beneficiaries. While the many benefits derived from public, forested lands are recognized by decision makers at the federal, state, and local levels, new mechanisms are needed to sustain those benefits through restoring forest health and providing resiliency as extreme weather accelerates wildfire and tree mortality. The tools and methods developed under this project will be directly applicable to forests in California's Sierra Nevada, to forests across the semi-arid western United States, and potentially more broadly. The pilot Forest Resilience Bond has catalyzed a broad partnership of stakeholders to plan landscape-scale forest restoration over the remaining 226,000 acres of Tahoe National Forest in the North Yuba River watershed over the next 20 years. The partnership includes the Tahoe National Forest, Sierra Nevada Conservancy (CA state agency), Yuba Water Agency, The Nature Conservancy, the South Yuba River Citizens League, the Nisenan tribal community, and other organizations. The unofficial partnership has been meeting since late 2018 to develop the organization and management plan. The official Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and press release will be held in October 2019 (draft attached). The partnership has also applied for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), which could provide up to $4M for 10 years for planning and facilitation. Implementation of planned restoration projects are expected to be funded through the Forest Resilience Bond. We are now putting together a funding plan and proposal for the Trapper Project, a 30,000 acre project that will be NEPA permitted this year and requires about $15M for implementation. This is the expansion in pace and scale of forest restoration we hoped for and expected that the Forest Resilience Bond. Changes/Problems:Granted a 1 year no-cost extension We were recently granted a one-year no-cost extension for the grant. This was due to 1) a delay in data acquisition and processing from our academic partners, and 2) our pilot Yuba project did not begin implementation of major forest restoration activities until summer 2019. Instead of reporting on the restoration activities impact on the water balance for 2018-2019 as initially proposed, we will report on them for 2019-2020. We have now completed water balance assessments for the central Sierra Nevada region, and have developed a prototype for our website dashboard to communicate the value of water supply protection and risks of wildfire to potential stakeholders. As such, we are now requesting the remaining funds be released to complete the water balance assessment for the remainder of the Sierra Nevada, for the 2019-2020 implementation of the Yuba Project, and to incorporate utility and stakeholder feedback into the dashboard design. The project objectives are on track to be completed on-budget in the revised 36-month timeline. Pilot expands to North Yuba Forest Partnership, Autumn 2019 The pilot Forest Resilience Bond has catalyzed a broad partnership of stakeholders to plan landscape-scale forest restoration over the remaining 226,000 acres of Tahoe National Forest in the North Yuba River watershed over the next 20 years. The partnership includes the Tahoe National Forest, Sierra Nevada Conservancy (CA state agency), Yuba Water Agency, The Nature Conservancy, the South Yuba River Citizens League, the Nisenan tribal community, and other organizations. The unofficial partnership has been meeting since late 2018 to develop the organization and management plan. The official Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and press release will be held in October 2019 (draft attached). The partnership has also applied for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), which could provide up to $4M for 10 years for planning and facilitation. Implementation of planned restoration projects are expected to be funded through the Forest Resilience Bond. We are now putting together a funding plan and proposal for the Trapper Project, a 30,000 acre project that will be NEPA permitted this year and requires about $15M for implementation. This is the expansion in pace and scale of forest restoration we hoped for and expected that the Forest Resilience Bond. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Through this project we were able to hire 3 summer interns who pursuing graduate work in geography, business, and natural resources. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?This work helped to support research in a paper for an academic journal that was accepted for publication. This work also has produced an interactive dashboard, still in progress, that will be a useful engagement tool for project development and the many stakeholders who weigh in on forest management. The products developed in this task are already enabling Blue Forest Conservation to engage utility stakeholders with a specific forest restoration project and show 1) the potential to enhance water yield, 2) an estimate of the additional volume of water that could be expected, and 3) an estimate of the vegetation recovery rate. We have completed this analysis for our second potential Forest Resilience Bond pilot in the Eldorado National Forest, on the South Fork of the American River (Figure 2). Regrowth rates in this region indicate the need to maintain treatments 10-20 years after initial restoration activities to maintain the runoff benefits. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is considering three forest restoration projects to participate in (Figure 3), and we have calculated the potential for a decrease in forest evapotranspiration over a decade with the prescribed activities for each project (Figure 4). Using the large wildfire areas provides a better ability to produce a range of potential evapotranspiration responses. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will finalize the interactive dashboard and continue to run additional hydology analysis to communicate to our utility stakeholders regarding the value of watershed management.The first year of restoration was in water year 2019, so we have shifted the Task 2 water yield analysis of the restoration project from 2018-2019 to 2019-2020 with the granted one-year no-cost extension of the grant. Blue Forest is periodically visiting the project site to provide tours and observe the implementation of restoration activities. The 2019 water year is expected to show a very limited evapotranspiration response, given the timing of the treatment activity occurred late in the water year (ending September 30). The 2020 water yield will provide the first significant indication of water balance response to treatments. Vegetation change detected by NDVI was processed, 2019 PRISM precipitation data has not yet been released to calculate the annual water balance. Initial results of historical water balance and wildfire impacts have been published in the Frontiers in Forests & Global Change journal.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We have combined spatially-gridded precipitation data (PRISM, 800 meter resolution) with evapotranspiration calculated from NDVI (Landsat, 30 m resolution), to estimate spatially-explicit runoff (30 m resolution) for California from 1985 to 2017. The runoff product is based on a simple water balance equation that assumes long-term subsurface storage is a neutral term:Runoff = Precipitation - Evapotranspiration. We have validated the runoff product for the Sierra Nevada using the full natural flow calculated by the California Department of Water Resources for the American and Yuba watersheds. This evaluation will be expanded for the remaining 10 major watersheds, providing 396 total years of hydrology data for comprehensive evaluation. We have completed a prototype of the Task 3 dashboard development for the central Sierra Nevada, and will expand the prototype to the remaining Sierra Nevada and incorporate utility feedback over the next 12 months. During the design phase, we followed existing guidelines for digital product development, including: 1) static mock-ups, 2) discussions about how the content would be produced, 3) technical implementation, and 4) coding the tool with JavaScript and HTML/CSS. This will ensure a scalable and sustainable tool, as we anticipate new data and case studies to be added to the dashboard in the coming months. The prototype dashboard is available for interactive viewing by contacting Blue Forest Conservation.

Publications

Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Roche JW, Ma Q, Rungee J and Bales RC (2020) Evapotranspiration Mapping for Forest Management in Californiaâ¿¿s Sierra Nevada. Front. For. Glob. Change 3:69. doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2020.00069

Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19

Outputs
Target Audience:The Yuba Forest Resilience Bond (FRB) was finalized on November 1, 2018, and the Yuba Project started to see restoration work being implemented within three weeks. A majority of the work was implemented in July - September 2019, as a heavy snow year precluded any winter activity. Through September 30, 2019, the National Forest Foundation directed the implementation of fuel reduction (524 acres), prescribed fire preparation (1,200 acres), biomass utilization (292 acres, 13,778 tons), and road reconstruction (3.4 miles). The Yuba Water Agency's participation in the first FRB pilot has resulted in nine organizations coming together to form the North Yuba Forest Partnership (NYFP). The NYFP is working together to better manage 275,000 acres of the North Yuba River watershed. Planning will incorporate forest ecosystem and watershed health, community protection and wildfire ingress/egress routes, and protected source-water supply. Furthermore, YWA's matching funds to the CA Department of Conservation's Watershed Coordinator program has enabled the South Yuba River Citizen's League to hire two staff members to better integrate forest health, wood products, bioenergy, and watershed management across the Yuba River watershed. This includes the planning of the Camptonville Community Partnership's bioenergy plant, the development of which YWA is also supporting. This success of this pilot FRB has also allowed Blue Forest Conservation to generate additional support, we now have 24 National Forests interested in developing a Forest Resilience Bond on their landscape and will grow to 9 team members by January 2021. We are excited to have a letter of interest from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), and just submitted a project proposal to their staff for a FRB on the Eldorado National Forest that would close in early 2020. Changes/Problems:We are in the process of submitting a no-cost extension as well as a budget modification. Our subawardee has less bandwidth than anticipated and we are likely to direct a co-hire to our research partner organization, Blue Forest Finance, to jointly supervise an employee with our science advisor at the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. Otherwise, we are on track with the grant, although it is moving a bit slower and we would appreciate more time at no cost to extend the period of evaluation and research of the project. Additional time allows for more precipitation and forestry data to be collected to improve the robust analysis of our work and make a stronger representation of the benefits to the utility stakeholders. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Dr. Phil Saksa has traveled to a few conferences in Oregon and California with other research colleagues and he has been able to provide an update on the research and evaluation tools that are being created through this grant as well as used to inform the Yuba Water Agency of the work. The Sierra Nevada Research Institute continues to do work to support this grant, however much of their engagement will be over the next couple years as the field treatments advance and the opportunity evaluate the outcomes from the Forest Service treatments becomes possible. We expect some peer reviewed scientific articles to come from this effort. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Water supply impacts from implemented restoration work continue to be evaluated.We are able to report vegetation change observed over the treatment area (1,084 acres) and historical comparisons of vegetation water demand (evapotranspiration) with other regions of the watershed. We'll use the historical information to ensure any changes in vegetation water demand is due to restoration treatments, and not due to changes in climate or other external factors. The most current algorithm from the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at UC Merced for producing water supply estimates from vegetation change incorporates a precipitation product from the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University which does not get released until the following July (2020). We will continue to apply the SNRI measurement framework in subsequent reports to evaluate water supply benefits from this project. Also attached is a more detailed report on the North Yuba River that was submitted to the Healthy Watersheds Consortium program, who provided funds to produce these analyses in support of FRB development. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period, we plan to both evaluate the water supply benefits from the Yuba Project and to scale that predictive analysis statewide to California. We will also develop the dashboard for viewing these materials on a web portal. Additional analysis will be supported from this grant for the potentialEldorado National Forest project with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District which has a high likelihood to be our second project and actually earn revenue for Blue Forest Conservation. The USFS remains a strong partner and will also help to direct our resources and analysis towards areas and may also yield future projects.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The assessment of the North Yuba Project is well underway to look for the potential for water quantity gains. This also includes some assessment of the restoration project that has already begun implementation where ecological thinning and prescribed fire is likely to reduce the forest water demand. Much of the PRISM data for this past year will not be available until 2020 and further analysis on the impacts from that project will be conducted. With respect to the other goals, the evaluation of potential water yield enhancement across California and the development of an interactive map have all been scoped with some work to advance the work products, but not sufficiently to share. Most of the work with respect to the California statewide analysis and the dashboard will be completed during the next year and possibly with even more timeif a no cost extension is approved.

Publications