Ashland Forest Resiliency Project
Ashland Forest Resiliency Project, Ashland, OR, USA, 2010–ongoing. Lomakatsi Restoration Project. Scale: 7600 acres. 1900 feet above seal level. Drawing: Makio Yamamoto, Slide Kelly, Zheming Zhang.
The Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project is an ongoing collaboration since 2010 between the Lomakatsi Restoration Project, the City of Ashland, The Nature Conservancy, and the United States Forest Service. The project covers 7,600 acres of land to support, preserve, and restore wildlife habitat, water quality, and a healthy forest ecosystem. While the primary objective of the project is to reduce the risk of large-scale wildfire and help large, old trees survive fire, insects, and disease, there are also initiatives to ensure that watershed values, from human life and property, older forests, abundant, clean drinking water, wildlife habitat, and ecological sustainability. Fire was suppressed for over a century across the Ashland watershed, during which time young Douglas fir and white firs have grown and shaded groundcover, killing older trees and fueling wildfires that climb like ladders to the tree canopy. The Lomakatsi Restoration Project is a group of ecologists who have worked to facilitate partnerships and build community across landscape-scale restoration projects, all of which are community-based and include intensive meetings. The Ashland Forest Resiliency Project has used ecological thinning across the watershed and a management strategy that limits camping and campfires year-round to protect our watershed and community. The project uses processes of yarding, both in helicopters and ground-based management, and highlights the challenges of bringing heavy machinery into the forest on existing roadways and ensuring that slopes do not erode during rainfall. Controlled burns are being introduced with required safety precautions to consume leaf litter, leaves, and branches.
References
Shannon, Kelly and Danielle Kaufman. “California is Burning: Rethinking the Wildland/(Sub)urban Interface.” Landezine. January 9, 2018. http://landezine.com/index.php/2018/01/california-is-burning-rethinking-the-wildland-suburban-interface/
Schuler, Timothy A. “Taking the Wind out of Wildfire.” Landscape Architecture Magazine (March 2019): 96-105.
Gillison, Lindsey, Cathy Whitlock and Glynis Humphrey. “Resilience and fire management in the Anthropocene.” Ecology and Society 24, no. 3 (2019):14.
Davis, Emily and Eric M. White. “Collaboration and stewardship authority: the Ashland Forest Resiliency Project.” 2015. https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/19626
Links
Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project
Cheri Hammons, “The Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project: Ashland’s Chamber maps out its greatest resource,” Southern Oregon Magazine, July 15, 2014.