On July 19, come learn about fire ecology and history of the Sierra Nevada, the types of fuel treatments being used in our region, and pros and cons of these treatments. The local Redbud Chapter of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) will host this program at 10 a.m. at the Madelyn Helling Library’s Gene Albaugh Community Room in Nevada City. The guest speaker, Dr. Jeff Lauder, will also discuss why certain treatment decisions are made, how to maximize landscape resilience while considering native species protection, and where these goals may converge or diverge.
More Extreme Fires
Forests of the Sierra Nevada mountains were forged in fire; fire-adapted species evolved to thrive on low-intensity, high-frequency fire to clear gaps for germination and cycle soil nutrients. A century of fire suppression has decoupled our forests from this cycle, allowing fire fuel loads to build to a level that greatly increases the likelihood of extreme fire behavior.
California has seen increasing buildout of human environments in the Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI (the boundary between the built and natural environment). As a result, these extreme fires threaten human resources as well as departing from what native species are adapted and resilient to.
Options for Fuel Treatments
This increase in fire intensity has resulted in a greater “pace and scale” of fuel “treatments” across the Sierra. The goal of fuel treatment is often to “reset” the clock on our natural fire return interval—decreasing fuel load and time between fires—to invite low severity to restore the system. However, there are mixed opinions on fuel treatment efficacy, need for maintenance, and tradeoffs in terms of understory species and general ecological benefit.
Location and Registration
This Redbud Chapter program will take place Saturday, July 19, 2025 at 10 a.m. in the Gene Albaugh Community Room at the Madelyn Helling Library at 980 Helling Way, Nevada City. Register for your free ticket
More information at https://chapters.cnps.org/redbud/?p=3574&preview=true
About the Presenter
Dr. Jeff Lauder, Forest Ecologist, Executive Director at Sierra Streams Institute, is a lifelong Californian, having spent most of his early years exploring and recreating in the Sierra Nevada. He is a forest ecologist, with a focus on drought, tree physiology, tree carbon use, and disturbance ecology.
He did his undergraduate education and master’s research at CSU Chico, where he studied the impacts of forest treatments on soil properties and forest growth.
He has since worked with the USGS doing high-elevation botanical and amphibian surveys in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. After serving as an AmeriCorps member doing field ecology at Sierra Streams and after his PhD research on physiological drivers of drought-induced mortality in Sierra Nevada conifers, he returned to Sierra Streams, where he is now Executive Director.
He works on projects integrating forest health into watershed management and restoration and on connecting people to science, ensuring sound and accurate scientific information is available to and interpretable by the community, and guiding our research and management projects ranging from climate change impacts on high elevation streams to forest and riparian vegetation management.