In concert with the Regional Ecology Program, the Safford lab plays an important role in supporting Forest Service efforts to develop management strategies and plans that are cost effective; increase ecosystem resilience; protect and sustain key species, resources, and ecosystem services; and maximize management flexibility in the face of rapid and often unpredictable environmental change (e.g., Hayward et al. 2009, Richardson et al. 2009, Schwartz et al. 2012, Wiens et al. 2012, Safford and Vallejo 2019).
We have demonstrated that forest fuel treatments, when properly employed, can play an important role in reducing forest mortality to wildfire, in maintaining living stocks of carbon in fire-prone forests, and in restoring forest structure (Safford et al. 2009, 2012c, Carlson et al. 2012, Winford et al. 2015, Restaino et al. 2019).
Tara Ursell is leading a study that is examining the ecological and economic costs and benefits of different postfire management tactics that are currently used or may be used in California. We have played and continue to play a key role in the Forest Planning process in California, and we recently helped to develop a postfire management strategy framework for National Forests involved in restoration of burned areas (Meyer et al. 2021).
One of the lab’s major roles, in concert with the Ecology Program, is to act as a boundary spanning organization that can serve the important roles of providing objective, up-to-date science to managers, as well as management input and feedback to researchers. Safford lab and Ecology Program members were part of an NCEAS working group that published a special issue in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment about the practice of translational ecology and the importance of boundary spanning (e.g. Enquist et al. 2017, Safford et al. 2017). The Safford lab also leads a biennial ECL 290 graduate seminar called Boundary Spanning in Ecology for the Graduate Group in Ecology.