Trinity Community Protection and Landscape Resilience Project / 2015 Fire Reforestation

Trinity Community Protection and Landscape Resilience Project / 2015 Fire Reforestation

The Project will treat approx. 400 acres of the 2015 Wildfire Reforestation Project. Project will include site preparations that were affected by the fires of 2015. Reduction of fuels within these preexisting plantation will be accomplished through site preparation activities utilizing hand, and mechanical methods where slopes are conductive. Where site preparation occurs and results in fuels concentration, burning of these concentrations prior to tree planting will also be conducted. Following site preparation, the preexisting plantations will be planted with a native mix of conifers through hand planting methods. Maintenance of these plantations will be conducted as part of this project. Maintenance will include manual release, thinning of planted clusters, and, culturing of resprouted hardwoods. In addition to the plantations, naturally established forested areas that burned at moderate to high severity with inadequate residual stocking to meet the reforestation standards according to the Region 5 Forest Service Reforestation Handbook 2409.26b, Chapter 4.11 (1991), will be planted. These areas are referred to as a founder stand or outside plantation (OP) areas. Natural seedlings and sprouting hardwood trees will be left where they exist and seedlings will be planted in areas where natural seedlings and sprouting hardwoods are not found. Newly established seedlings will require release from competing vegetation to create conditions that will allow the seedlings to survive, become established, and grow, this reforestation maintenance will be conducted as needed based on survival and competing vegetation exams. Plantation units will be hand worked unless they were previously harvested utilizing ground based equipment and the slopes of the units are less than 35%, they are accessible by roads open to the public, and there are no botanical or archeological resources present within the treatment areas.

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