South Warner Forest Health Mapping and Inventory TA
Project Background
The South Warner Forest Health Project (SWFHP) encompasses 39,037 acres of private, non-industrial forestland in Lake County, east and south of Lakeview. This landscape scale project is tied directly to Fremont- Winema National Forest’s South Warner Integrated Landscape Restoration Project, totaling 85,620 acres and is adjacent to the North Warner Forest Health Project where current treatment is underway. Through a century of fire suppression, the forests of this region have increased in density, lost diversity, and altered the structure and hydrologic function of watersheds. This loss from historic conditions has increased the scale and risk of fire severity, and reduced forest resiliency to drought, insects, and disease. High priority resources and habitat such as waterways and associated sensitive species, homes, ranch land, and private/industrial timberland are currently in jeopardy.
The goal of the SWFHP is to initiate a landscape-level forest management effort aimed at improving forest health conditions that will reverse the current fire trend and increase ecosystem resiliency. Based on similar efforts in Lake County, the SWFHP uses an 8 step model founded on personal connections with informed and engaged private landowners. A comprehensive outreach, mapping, and inventory effort will inform and facilitate cross-boundary planning and implementation of forest health practices. Technical Assistance will be used to conduct targeted outreach to private landowners, including phone calls, mailings, site visits, forest management planning sessions, and educational workshops. Landowner education efforts will include two OSU Extension workshops for forest ecology/management, fire science and prioritization planning.
Project Partners
Lake County Umbrella Watershed Council, Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, Lake County Resources Initiative, Fremont Winema National Forest, Oregon Department of Forestry, Natural Resources Conservation Services, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Klamath Lake Forest Health Partnership, and private landowners in the project area.
Project Status
The South Warner Forest Health Mapping and inventory efforts were initiated in the spring and summer of 2022. We began with an introductory landowner newsletter that went out to every private landowner (308) within the project area, this letter also included a permission authorization form. Many of those were returned and then we began follow up phone calls and one-on-one meetings to explain the project and the process that it entails. Meanwhile we began the remote sensing GIS portion of identifying individual polygons based on vegetation type. These stand delineation maps were refined and improved over multiple reviews and meetings. We updated and revised our attributes list for the upcoming field validation crews. Once those protocols were established, we met several times with our partners at Lake County Resources Initiative (LCRI) to verbally explain the software downloads and how to capture the data correctly. Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) and Lake County Umbrella Watershed Council (LCUWC) spent a few days with the field crews to ground truth, train, and set expectations for the protocol. LCUWC Program Manager kept a running spreadsheet of the landowners who allowed access as well as any special instructions for the field crews and updated that list for LCRI throughout the summer as needed.
At the end of the summer field season 2022, the crews had mapped and inventoried 23,285 acres (60% of the total private lands within the project boundary). The crews worked to obtain overstory and understory tree and shrub cover type, stand density, and fuel loading, along with location of invasive weeds, springs, aspen, and mountain mahogany. The information gathered has been compiled to create priority area maps for resource managers and landowners. The data and maps will serve as a valuable resource tool for implementation.
Throughout the winter of 2022/2023 ODF and LCUWC met several times to revise the Attributes Decision Matrix which determines how the landowner maps will be displayed. The GIS contractor took this information and tested it on just two of our larger landowners so that we could analyze and proof. We continued to make a few tweaks and once finalized moved forward with the remaining landowner map creations.
For the 2023 summer field season, we hired an alternate field crew which focused on completing the missing polygons, regathering some lost data from last summer and reached out to more landowners for a second attempt to get them to participate. This crew mapped and inventoried an 5,603 acres, bring the total to 73.6% of private lands mapped within the project boundary.
Over the winter 2023/2024 with mapping efforts completed, the Lake County Umbrella Watershed Council shifted it's focus to landowner outreach, education and engagement. The individual landowner maps and information packets were complied into binders for each participating landowner (179 total). A South Warners Landowner Workshop was organized, advertised (mailings, social media and website) and held in June 2024. Lastly we have discussed with each landowner how they might fit into the potential restoration implementation in the near future. This work will provide the LCUWC and other partners with valued data as we pursue future restoration funding. Our goal is to have the first phase of implementation to begin in Spring of 2026 if awarded our open solicitation application for South Warners Restoration that we plan to submit in the fall of 2025.