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Watershed Assessment Toolkit
for Ecosystem Resilience

Restoration Objectives

Forests around the US, which provide critical natural infrastructure for our water resources, are threatened by catastrophic wildfire. A suite of challenges, including historic fire exclusion and climate change, have led to unhealthy landscapes with high risk of severe wildfire and threatened water supply. Forest restoration offers a path forward – by removing excess fuels, restoring native tree species, and introducing prescribed fire, these forest health treatments restore ecological function and create more resilient forests for communities near and far that rely on forests for clean water, air, and recreation.

Here we highlight the risk of catastrophic fire, the potential for water supply enhancement, and the intersection of these risks and opportunities to better understand the value of implementing forest restoration across the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California.

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Forest Resilience Bonds

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 Restoration Objectives  
  1. Wildfire Risk
  2. Potential for Water Supply
    Enhancement with Restoration
  3. Fire + Water (Bivariate)

 

Annual wildfire risk of forested regions is produced by the U.S. Forest Service from a nationwide fire modeling effort using USFS Wildfire Hazard Potential, which provides an absolute indication of annual fire risk at a point in time. This map reveals the severity of wildfire risk over a 30-year time period.

Wildfire Risk
  • Low
  • Intermed
  • High
Source: USDA | US Forest Service

 

In some cases, removing small-diameter trees from dry western forests can lead to increased water supply available for downstream communities. Using remote-sensing and hydrologic tools, this map shows the potential for increases in water supply following forest restoration, based on long-term precipitation and vegetation water demand.

Pontential for Water Supply Enhancement
  • Low
  • Intermed
  • High
Source: Landsat

Find a waterbody:

 

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). This map overlay of two spatial layers provides insights into the coupled potential for restoration work to decrease fire risk while increasing water yield.

Bivariate Map
Fire Risk vs. Water Availability
  • High
  • Med
  • Low
  •  Low Med High
Source: Blue Forest Conservation
  Forest Resilience Bonds The Forest Resilience Bond (FRB) is an environmental impact bond that deploys private capital to make our national forests more resilient to a changing climate.


  About the Partnership