California has 33 million acres of forest land, one-third of the state’s total land area. Sixty percent of this forest is publicly owned - for example, by the USDA Forest Service and the National Park Service. The remaining 40% is privately owned. One-third of the private forest is held by timber companies; the remaining two-thirds is held by families, individuals, and tribes.
Climate threats to California’s forests include heat and drought, increased fire frequency and intensity, and interacting stressors such as disease and insects. The California Climate Hub has conducted assessments and syntheses, developed products and tools, and held outreach events to support forest land managers in adapting to these stressors. See more on some of these efforts through the links below.
- The Adaptation Strategies and Approaches for California Forest Ecosystems report is a menu of adaptation strategies offering flexible, yet tangible, options for integrating climate change considerations into California forest management.
- The Healthy Forests Briefs cover blue oak woodlands, ponderosa pine forests, and coastal redwood forests, characterizing healthy forest attributes, ecological function, and key stressors affecting forest health.
- The Climate-Wise Reforestation Toolkit is a suite of tools that can be used individually or together to inform reforestation decisions in context of tree mortality and climate change.
- The Climate Change Primer for Forest Managers in the Sierra Nevada provides forest managers working in the Sierra Nevada with a basic overview of the relevant scientific issues bearing on forest management in this region.
- The Reforestation Dialogues and Symposium, was designed to promote co-concept generation and co-production around the current challenges and opportunities related to climate-informed reforestation across California.
You can find more forestlands information at the following external websites:
Pacific Southwest Research Station (California): Climate Change, Mitigation, and Adaptation Science.
University of California | Forest Research and Outreach | California Forests.