Vegetation Change and Wildfire Fuels Assessment in Three San Francisco Bay Area Network

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This project supports the Secretary⿿s priority to ⿿utilize science to identify best practices⿝ (1.a.) for park management actions. This project will be a collaboration that will result in improved scientific understanding of fuel loads and vegetation conditions in Point Reyes National Seashore, Muir Woods National Monument, and Golden Gate National Recreation Area. This information will allow park managers to make better decisions for fire and fuels projects, inform multiagency efforts to manage the wildland-urban interface, and will provide baseline information in the case of a landscape level event such as a wildfire. This project enhances work being undertaken by the Inventory and Monitoring Program in the San Francisco Bay Area Network and thereby helps fulfill the NPS responsibility to ⿿undertake a program of inventory and monitoring of System resources to establish baseline information and to provide information on the long-term trends in the condition of System resources,⿝ as required by 54 USC 100704. The public will benefit through access to a dataset that will improve public safety through enabling fire prevention planning. The public will also benefit from an improved natural resources management between all the public agencies in the surrounding area. Additionally, by providing improved scientific information the project will help identify best practices and thereby facilitate project planning. The goals and objectives of this project are to engage the public about fire and fuels management and related topics as they encounter the public while doing field work. Our primary goal is an updated vegetation and fuels map for NPS lands in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo Counties and to continue with the complex wildland-urban interface in Marin and San Mateo Counties, understanding vegetation cover and landscape change for effective fire and fuels management, interagency project planning, sensitive species management, and communication between land management agencies sharing boundaries. Integral to our objectives is consultation with the community and surrounding public agencies.

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