Discussion
Let us know what you think about any topic related to the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project in the forums below. The Principal Investigators on the UC Science Team cannot answer every post, but they will read all comments in our their areas, and respond to comments as a group at each quarterly meeting. We greatly value your input!
Where will the meeting be located? I'm interested in attending whether the meeting is Jan 11 or 24. I have not been receiving SNAMP emails, however, and would like to be included. The website displays neither an email address nor a meeting location, which hinders public participation. Thanks.
Assuming the study sites have been selected at that time, I would be interested in the factors that influenced the selection of the sites. Moreover, I would be interested in the FS plans in the study areas and the timing of the planned projects over the next several years.
I appreciate the challenge with identifying a site and ensuring it remains unaffected by the adaptive management study. I applaud the team for its position, “The UCST continued to emphasize the need to ensure that what they are studying represents the “normal” routine management activities as guided by the 2004 Record of Decision (ROD)”. However, I noted a later comment, “This will allow for mutual planning of SPLAT placement to maximize research goals”. I find that at odds with the earlier statement. As an independent, shouldn’t the UCST only monitor the results of the FS and not be involved in anyway with the placement of the SPLATs?
The field notes alluded several times to the SNAMP goals. These are probably
articulated somewhere, but if they will control the selection of the site and
perhaps the “mutual planning of the SPLAT placement”, they should be headlined
somewhere.
I would suggest that as this project moves forward, that the UCST also select two other sites, one in the north and one in the south, near these areas, for the purpose of comparison between the projects that are approved in the study sites and the projects approved in these non-study sites to determine the degree that the projects really are typical and not altered because of the adaptive management study.
I believe the research design represents an excellent start to address issues of adaptive management in the Sierra Nevada. Having worked in a number of watershed to bioregional resource management efforts in California and internationally, I believe the research design relates well to the general scale of human management decisions, and the research design allows for future scaling up to larger bioregional questions, or for similar approaches in different regions or aspects of the Sierra Nevada
Are you going to consider the impacts of climate change on hydrology?
Turbidity is included in the proposed suite of measurements, primarily as an indicator of erosion and sediment movement associated with runoff events. It is proposed to use autonomous, continuous measurements, which will provide relative turbidity measurements at the same location over time. Regarding macroinvertebrates, we agree that grazing can have an effect; grazing practices and history will need to be evaluated as part of the detailed site selection. Grazing can affect other factors as well.
Q: What kinds of stakeholders will be contacted to participate in the adaptive management process? Our goal is to provide various kinds of ways for various kinds of stakeholders to engage in the process, including information sharing and mutual learning meetings, and research planning, monitoring, and interpretation. We will certainly contact local elected officials, community leaders, and all kinds of interested stakeholders in each study area. For example, FireSafe Councils, we expect, will have a strong interest. We also plan to make an effort to bring in people who are not ordinarily at the table.
Q: How much impact will stakeholder decisions have? This in itself is a research question for our team! The comment we received at this website reminded us of this very crucial issue in time for the second workplan draft, and we decided to deal with it overtly as a topic for study. We need to somehow figure in the experimental design and scientific demands of the adaptive management process, complex administrative and legal framework of Forest Service decisionmaking, and the diverse points of view of stakeholders and partners. In our proposal, we state that we are committed to being very upfront about our knowledge of the opportunities and ultimate impact of stakeholder decisions for each phase or topic of the program. In addition, we plan to study how feedback from both scientific results and stakeholders is incorporated into Forest Service management decisions--and our own scientific approaches.
Q: Will direct public input be part of the participatory processes effort? Yes, absolutely. We see direct communication between scientists, managers, and stakeholders as essential to this process. For example, our public meetings are open to all and will continue to be so as long as we can get a room large enough. Direct input from the public will be part of all participatory processes.
Q: What kinds of methods will you be using to reach out to people, in addition to the website?
We are open to suggestions, and appreciate them! In particular, once dedicated personnel are hired to focus on engaging the public, we would expect all possible methods to be on the table for discussion. The main question we addressed to those attending our first public meeting was: how will we know when we have successfully reached out and engaged people? This question remains open!
Q: Why so little time for public input on the draft workplan?
A: We were up against a hard deadline, and basically for all the reasons you can imagine, it took us longer to do the draft than we thought. Remember, we had to put something together that anyone could look at, and that is pretty scary. More relevant, however, is that we are still listening to and will respond to public comment, and we will still use it, most definitely. People have good ideas, and we continue to take advantage of that.
Q: What kinds of stakeholders will be contacted to participate in the adaptive management process? Our goal is to provide various kinds of ways for various kinds of stakeholders to engage in the process, including information sharing and mutual learning meetings, and research planning, monitoring, and interpretation. We will certainly contact local elected officials, community leaders, and all kinds of interested stakeholders in each study area. For example, FireSafe Councils, we expect, will have a strong interest. We also plan to make an effort to bring in people who are not ordinarily at the table.
Q: How much impact will stakeholder decisions have? This in itself is a research question for our team! The comment we received at this website reminded us of this very crucial issue in time for the second workplan draft, and we decided to deal with it overtly as a topic for study. We need to somehow figure in the experimental design and scientific demands of the adaptive management process, complex administrative and legal framework of Forest Service decisionmaking, and the diverse points of view of stakeholders and partners. In our proposal, we state that we are committed to being very upfront about our knowledge of the opportunities and ultimate impact of stakeholder decisions for each phase or topic of the program. In addition, we plan to study how feedback from both scientific results and stakeholders is incorporated into Forest Service management decisions--and our own scientific approaches.
Q: Will direct public input be part of the participatory processes effort? Yes, absolutely. We see direct communication between scientists, managers, and stakeholders as essential to this process. For example, our public meetings are open to all and will continue to be so as long as we can get a room large enough. Direct input from the public will be part of all participatory processes.
Q: What kinds of methods will you be using to reach out to people, in addition to the website?
We are open to suggestions, and appreciate them! In particular, once dedicated personnel are hired to focus on engaging the public, we would expect all possible methods to be on the table for discussion. The main question we addressed to those attending our first public meeting was: how will we know when we have successfully reached out and engaged people? This question remains open!
Q: Why so little time for public input on the draft workplan?
A: We were up against a hard deadline, and basically for all the reasons you can imagine, it took us longer to do the draft than we thought. Remember, we had to put something together that anyone could look at, and that is pretty scary. More relevant, however, is that we are still listening to and will respond to public comment, and we will still use it, most definitely. People have good ideas, and we continue to take advantage of that.
1) There were several comments regarding the scale of the study and the coordination of this research effort with ongoing efforts.
Given the magnitude and diversity of the Sierra Nevada bioregion, we needed to identify a smaller, more homogeneous subset of this space in order to obtain information that was relevant to the management issues, that was credible in terms of its scientific justification, and that was timely. When exploring potential sites across, it was clear that treatments that span an area much larger than 10,000 to 15,000 acres were not feasible given the time frame. We were charged to design a plan that would provide some information within 5-7 years. Such a short turn-around in necessary if any adaptive management is going to occur. The scientific challenges of scaling-up to a larger fireshed are also daunting. We have tools and experience working at the stand and small watershed level. There are many fewer guides to studying multiple processes in larger landscapes. We have proposed some novel approaches to addressing forest response at the fireshed scale that we hope will meet the scrutiny of scientific peer review. We have also emphasized the role of meta-replication in this workplan. Given the urgency of the questions and the paucity of the information, we need to collect, collate, and integrate all the available information.
2) Our focus on the mixed conifer forests on the westside of the Sierra Nevada was also related to this need to focus on a manageable subset of the Sierra Nevada. Thus the selection was another prioritization exercise. We choose the westside mixed conifer because it was the forest region most at risk of catastrophic fire.
3) Another comment requested we supply a budget.
Our current workplan (Feb 28) does include cost-estimates summarized by category, research theme, and year.
4) Finally we tried in the revised Feb 28 workplan to more explicitly identify the steps in the application of adaptive management plan and the role that the UC research team could play in this process.
Specifically, we defined the available decision-space and how we would integrate new knowledge. Throughou,t all research themes we tried to make clear how the UC research team would contribute to the “Learn and Think” phases of adaptive management. We also explicitly listed the sort of deliverable we expect to provide. For example, we proposed developing and holding small workshops to engage the UC research team with Forest Service decision-makers. The workshops would be theme-based with an emphasis on hands-on and field-based learning to keep them focused and productive. Similar small workshops will be offered to the interested publics. The goals of these workshops go beyond information sharing. They seek to better understand how new information can impact the “DO” phase of the adaptive management process.
If there are not enough Spotted owl pairs or fisher found, will the SPLATs still be completed and the project continued? If so, how will wildlife be evaluated sufficiently for the Forest Service to apply SPLATs elsewhere in the landscape? Since there already is a SPLAT experiment being designed in Sagehen, how will this design differ, and will the Sagehen experiment include a wildlife component? How can SPLATs be implemented across the landscape currently by the Forest Service until the results of this Adaptive management experiment and the Saghen experiment are known?