SNC projects advance California’s nature-based solutions climate targets
As a leader in combating climate change, California has added another pillar to the state’s climate strategy—nature-based solutions (NBS). These solutions are a suite of land-management activities that channel natural processes to remove and store carbon, prevent future emissions, and build climate resilience.
Since its founding, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) has advanced NBS. The SNC funds forest health, land conservation, mountain meadow restoration, and wildfire risk reduction projects across Sierra-Cascade landscapes that enhance the region’s ability to store carbon.
California’s climate goals, NBS Climate Targets, and SNC’s role
California’s 2022 Scoping Plan found that the state’s lands are currently a net source of carbon emissions due to the accelerating impacts of climate change, a legacy of fire exclusion, and disconnection from traditional land-management practices. This means that California’s lands, in aggregate, emit more carbon than they remove and store through natural processes.
To put us on a path to return our lands to a carbon sink, California’s Nature-Based Solutions Climate Targets was released in 2024. This document identifies NBS with acreage and other targets, organized by land type.
The Sierra-Cascade is mostly covered by forests (55 percent) and shrublands and chaparral (26 percent). The region also contains critical and threatened mountain meadow wetlands. As such, the SNC consistently delivers projects that advance the NBS climate targets for wildfire-risk reduction, forests, shrublands and chapparal, and wetlands.
Delivering on the NBS climate targets is a key strategy, and the SNC is a critical partner, to shift the state’s lands from carbon sources to carbon sinks.
NBS projects in the Sierra-Cascade
The SNC has funded several landmark projects throughout the Sierra-Cascade that are helping the state achieve its NBS climate targets. The following projects highlight the NBS climate target categories and activities that SNC advances.
Reducing wildfire risk in the South Yuba River Canyon
NBS Climate Target Category: Wildfire Risk Reduction
NBS Activities: Beneficial Fire & Fuel Reduction
California’s NBS climate targets identify wildfire-risk reduction as a category that cuts across forest, shrublands and chaparral, and grassland land types. Catastrophic wildfire has been one of the largest sources of carbon emissions in California over the past eight years. Returning lands to a more natural fire regime will address the emissions and other devastating impacts of severe wildfires.
As wildfires have become larger and more destructive to communities and ecosystems in recent years, the SNC is doubling down on investments to protect those at risk. In June 2023, the SNC awarded $2.36 million to the non-profit American Rivers, which is leading the Hoyt-Purdon Prescribed Fire and Fuel Reduction Project.
Already well underway, the project will reduce fuels on 570 acres in the South Yuba River Canyon, protecting countless homes and community resources near Nevada City in this populous area of the Sierra Nevada foothills.
The project employs forest thinning and prescribed fire, fuels-reduction treatments that significantly improve forest health and wildfire resilience. Reducing wildfire risk provides peace of mind to the residents of Nevada City, Grass Valley, and thousands more—leaving the forest in a resilient state and less likely to emit large amounts of greenhouse gases from a future high-severity wildfire.
The reintroduction of “good” fire to the landscape also introduces other important benefits, such as improving soil nutrients and wildlife habitat, while controlling pests and diseases.
Restoring climate and fire-resilient woodlands in Butte County
NBS Climate Target Category: Forests
NBS Activity: Restoration
California’s NBS climate targets identify climate-smart, forest-management activities that aim to correct the damage that climate change, a century of fire exclusion, and historic timber harvest practices have caused on its forests. These targets, once achieved, will restore the health and resilience of forestlands, and thus support durable and sustainable carbon stocks.
Currently, more than 50 percent of California’s forest carbon is stored within the Sierra-Cascade. However, many of these forests are overly dense and weakened by drought and other climate change-driven stressors, leaving them extremely susceptible to catastrophic wildfire and the subsequent release of stored carbon into the atmosphere. Such was the case for the dense conifer forests in the wildland-urban interface of Butte County, which burned at high severity in the 2018 Camp Fire and resulted in nearly 100 percent forest loss.
Recognizing the dire need, the SNC awarded $2.1 million to the Butte County Resource Conservation District (RCD) in July 2021 to implement the Concow Resilience Project. The project is part of the post-Camp Fire climate resilient reforestation strategy. Now nearly complete, it will ultimately restore close to 784 acres surrounding the rural community of Concow, 25 miles north of Oroville.
Following a wildfire as severe as the Camp Fire, reforestation and native species reintroduction is necessary to ensure the landscape does not undergo a large-scale type conversion from forest to shrubland.
The Butte County RCD and other project collaborators implemented various species reintroduction techniques, incorporating traditional ecological knowledge through collaboration with the Maidu tribe, to seed the landscape in a way that will result in a diverse, drought-tolerant, and climate-resilient forest.
While planting is nearly complete, the project area will continue to be actively managed towards open, oak-dominated woodlands—conditions that are consistent with the pre-settlement landscape. The Camp Fire was ruinous but implementing the NBS climate targets create an opportunity to rebuild and restore the land and nearby communities to greater resilience, health, and strength.
Meadow restoration in Alpine County protects carbon stores and biodiversity
NBS Climate Target Category: Wetlands and Seagrasses
NBS Activity: Restoration
California’s wetlands, including mountain meadows and seagrasses, are biodiversity hotspots, storing considerable carbon and are critical to the quality and quantity of the state’s water supply. Estimates suggest that less than 10 percent of California’s historical wetlands remain. This presents a great opportunity to deploy NBS to stop the loss and degradation of wetlands and begin to restore these vital ecosystems throughout the state.
The SNC recognizes the vital role mountain meadows play in the health of the Sierra-Cascade region and the state at large. Mountain meadows provide water security and carbon capture, can act as natural fire breaks, and are essential habitat for a remarkably diverse range of plants and animals.
In October 2021, the SNC awarded $1.4 million to the National Forest Foundation (NFF) for the West Fork Carson and Monitor Pass Project in Alpine County at the headwaters of the Carson River watershed. Conifer encroachment threatened to convert the mountain meadow to forest, resulting in a loss of ecological diversity and aspen habitat.
The NFF and other project collaborators removed the encroaching conifers and reduced surrounding stand density. This not only preserved the mountain meadow, but also improved forest health, protected hydrologic benefits, and lowered the risk of high-intensity wildfire.
California’s and SNC’s commitment to deliver the NBS climate targets highlights the power of working with nature to tackle climate change and other pressing environmental challenges.