A Postfire Restoration Prioritization Tool for Chaparral Shrublands

Presenters: Emma Underwood, Nicole Molinari, and Mark de Guzman We developed a Post-fire Restoration Prioritization (PReP) tool for chaparral shrublands to aid resource managers with early detection and prioritization of degraded chaparral landscapes in need of restoration. The PReP tool incorporates information on the post-fire regeneration strategy of plant communities and its interaction with fire history, pre- and post-fire drought, and non-native annual species to predict where recovery may be impeded, thereby identifying candidate areas for restoration. The tool also integrates spatial data on erosion risk for recent fires, so that areas in need of restoration can be prioritized for hillslope stabilization. We demonstrate the development of the tool using the Copper fire and illustrate its applicability in the field with data from the Powerhouse fire, both on the Angeles National Forest. In parallel to the work on the PReP tool, we have also been investigating the effects of fire on biomass recovery in chaparral shrublands to understand how fire effects changes in carbon stocks. Building on remote sensing data, we integrate biomass data from the literature and fire history to spatially estimate how carbon stocks are affected by fire-induced vegetation change across the landscape.