Boggs Mountain Demonstration State Forest Draft ... - Cal Fire

Boggs Mountain Demonstration State Forest Draft Management Plan, June 2008
Objective: The public has access to information about the State Forest mission as well as past
and current projects at BMDSF.
This will be facilitated by the California Demonstration State Forests web site, which will be
housed at the CAL FIRE web site. The CAL FIRE publications will be posted to the web site and
distributed to appropriate libraries in the State, as funding and staffing allows. The State Forests
Newsletter will report on projects and results.
Outreach Costs: BMDSF staff time requirements for outreach will vary with the number of
publications produced in-house and the number of tours and workshops put on. Editing of
contracted publications by BMDSF staff also consumes staff time and will vary with the number
and complexity of projects.
Many of the outreach costs are borne over the entire Demonstration State Forests system, such
as the web site or newsletter. This assumes that the biometrician, research coordinator, and
publications coordinator positions in Sacramento are fully staffed and that operating funds are
available. At least $10,000 per year will be needed in Sacramento to fund publishing costs.
Conclusion
This five-year research and demonstration plan for BMDSF provides a direction for the continued
success of BMDSF. Growth in demonstrations and experiments will result from the attention to
research infrastructure and outreach. The specific demonstration projects outlined above will add
significant value to current operational practices by using them as models for sustainable forest
management.
Research Projects
Planned Projects
A high priority for research is regenerating, increasing growth, and harvesting timber species in
second growth ponderosa pine and ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir forests in the interior coastal
range of California. The demonstration and experiment goals will be attained by management of
timber and non-timber species of vegetation through traditional and new harvesting, thinning, and
release practices.
There is an abundance of biomass material available for harvest within BMDSF in the form of
small, overcrowded, suppressed, dead and dying trees. The smaller trees are expensive to
harvest and the markets for pulp and fuel for wood-burning energy facilities have steadily
declined in California over the past decade. BMDSF will take an active role in exploring the
economic feasibility of harvesting these low-value resources for stand improvement and fire
hazard reduction.
Climate change and carbon sequestration is an emerging fertile research area. Climate change,
along with geological processes, has been shaping the range and genetic configuration of forests
for millions of years. Scientists have modeled what may be near term alterations in climate, but
there is a large degree of uncertainty. There is no significant environmental climate change
impact related to management of BMDSF that can be predicted given the current state of
scientific knowledge.
Three strategies will be employed on BMDSF to address the uncertainty regarding climate
change:
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