Data & Tools Training Workshop to Shasta-Trinity National Forest - USDA Climate Hubs

Data & Tools Training Workshop to Shasta-Trinity National Forest | USDA Climate Hubs

Continuing its award-winning work in tools training, the USDA California Climate Hub has designed and delivered a series of workshops focused on the applications of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force’s Regional Resource Kits. The most recent workshop, led by Hub Program Manager Jennifer Smith and Science Applications Specialist Jess DellaRossa, gathered forest managers from state and federal agencies at Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Redding.

The Task Force’s Regional Resource Kits aim to reduce wildfire hazard and increase forest resilience by providing web-based management tools and geospatial data tailored to four regions: the Sierra Nevada, Southern California, the Central Coast, and the North Coast. The data, the Task Force’s core metrics, and Planscape, a decision-support tool that allows users to visualize the core metrics, were the main focus of the workshop.

Working in small groups, participants completed two hands-on exercises that helped them explore the metrics in Planscape and imagine possible applications for the tool. The participants also got the opportunity to ask questions about the metrics and provide feedback on their utility to Peter Stine, a scientist on the metrics’ development team.

On the second day of the workshop, participants learned how the metrics can be used outside of Planscape to inform decision-making in forests via modeling. Research ecologist Patricia Manley went over the use of the metrics in the USFS’s ForSys model, while Alan Ager, a developer of the model, walked participants through a case study illustrating the topics discussed in Manley's presentation.

“We specifically curated the workshop content to effectively communicate complex topics and provided time for attendees to practice using the data for real-life scenarios,” said DellaRossa. “It was well worth the effort based on the positive feedback we received from the workshop attendees.”