UCCE and American Forests Launch Private-land Reforestation Opportunity Tool
Join us to explore a new tool developed by American Forests and the University of California Cooperative Extension that supports post-fire reforestation planning across California’s non-industrial private forestlands (NIPF). The application maps wildfire-impacted parcels and identifies reforestation and restoration opportunities statewide on NIPF, highlights demographic and social factors, and overlays existing reforestation programs and workforce capacity.
*This tool is limited to wildfires from 2019-2021 as part of the UCANR Post-Fire Forest Resilience Program’s grant scope and funding.
Please join us in using the application before the webinar
What the application offers:
Mapping Reforestation Opportunities: Visualizes reforestation and restoration potential across the state, highlighting wildfire-affected areas. Data can be looked at by wildfire and by private non-industrial land parcels.
Demographic and Social Analysis: Incorporates key demographic data from impacted communities to inform equitable and effective reforestation strategies.
Capacity and Resource Overlay: Displays existing reforestation programs, workforce resources (RCDs, RPFs), and infrastructure to support planning and project development.
If you would like to check out the tool before the webinar, please provide your email here.
Who should attend:
Natural resource professionals involved in statewide or regional wildfire recovery, forest management or reforestation planning, conservation organizations, landowners, and policymakers.
Presenters: Susie Kocher, Elizabeth Pansing, Sophia Lemmo, and Julia Sidman
Susie Kocher is an extension forester for the University of California Cooperative Extension in the Central Sierra, focusing on forest resilience from wildfire, drought and increasing disturbances. Her work includes applied research, outreach and education on forest stewardship. In the last few years, she has developed a statewide forest stewardship education program, a post-fire education program, and started two new prescribed burn associations. She is a California Registered Professional Forester.
Elizabeth Pansing develops and implements research initiatives to improve restoration and climate-smart forestry initiatives, provides insight into adaptive forest management strategies, and evaluates forest ecosystem response to climate change and other disturbance agents including wildfire. Pansing also ensures that forest management objectives and initiatives reflect the current state of the science, translating recent findings into actionable insights. Pansing is a quantitative ecologist with a background in forestry and alpine plant community ecology and has studied Rocky Mountain ecosystems for over a decade, focusing on conifer regeneration, post-fire community recovery and demographic modeling. She obtained her doctorate and master’s from the University of Colorado Denver.
Before joining CARCD in 2022, Sophia worked as a consulting Registered Professional Forester (RPF) across Northern California. Her experience implementing various silvicultural prescriptions, all with the backbone of promoting forest health, provided her with a deep understanding of the challenges facing California's forests. From the coastal redwoods to the oak woodlands and mixed conifer forests, Sophia gained insights on the diversity of successes and issues land managers encounter. Sophia holds a B.S. in Forestry and Natural Resources from UC Berkeley and an M.S. in Forestry from Cal Poly Humboldt. Both her professional and academic work focus on the mechanisms behind sustainable forest perpetuation. Passionate about supporting RCD's forest resilience work statewide, Sophia recognizes the critical role of RCDs as frontline workers in sustaining California's diverse forests
Julia has been working in the post-fire restoration field since moving to California in 2020. Originally hired by the Feather River RCD to assist with Forest Service reforestation for the 2007 Moonlight fire, the 2020 and 2021 fire seasons quickly shifted her position to working with non-industrial private forest landowners looking to restore their properties after wildfire. After several years of implementing the Plumas Emergency Forest Restoration Team with the Feather River RCD, Julia has made the move to Chico to work with the Butte RCD as the Forestry Program Manager and is hoping to expand her expertise of small-scale restoration and reforestation to Butte County residents
Moderator: Nic Dutch, UCCE Post-Fire Staff Research Associate
For more information, please contact nicdutch@ucanr.edu
