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Spending on postfire emergency watershed rehabilitation has increased during the past decade. A west-wide evaluation of USDA Forest Service burned area emergency rehabilitation (BAER) treatment effectiveness was undertaken as a joint project by USDA Forest Service Research and National Forest System staffs. This evaluation covers 470 fires and 321 BAER projects, from 1973 through 1998 in USDA Forest Service Regions 1 through 6. A literature review, interviews with key Regional and Forest BAER specialists, analysis of burned area reports, and review of Forest and District monitoring reports were used in the evaluation. The study found that spending on rehabilitation has increased to over $48 million during the past decade because the perceived threat of debris flows and floods has increased where fires are closer to the wildland-urban interface. Existing literature on treatment effectiveness is limited, thus making treatment comparisons difficult. The amount of protection provided by any treatment is small. Of the available treatments, contour-felled logs show promise as an effective hillslope treatment because they provide some immediate watershed protection, especially during the first postfire year. Seeding has a low probability of reducing the first season erosion because most of the benefits of the seeded grass occurs after the initial damaging runoff events. To reduce road failures, treatments such as properly spaced rolling dips, water bars, and culvert reliefs can move water past the road prism. Channel treatments such as straw bale check dams should be used sparingly because onsite erosion control is more effective than offsite sediment storage in channels in reducing sedimentation from burned watersheds. From this review, we recommend increased treatment effectiveness monitoring at the hillslope and sub-catchment scale, streamlined postfire data collection needs, increased training on evaluation postfire watershed conditions, and development of an easily accessible knowledge base of BAER techniques.

SEPAL is a big-data processing platform that combines super-computing power, open-source geospatial data processing software and modern geospatial data infrastructures like Google’s Earth Engine to enable geospatial data processing anywhere in the world.

This guide addresses FLR implementation as a whole but with a view toward climate change mitigation and adaptation; only if the landscape is changing and FLR is successful will climate benefits materialise. Implementing FLR in practice goes beyond generalized concepts. Implementing FLR generally requires a group of stakeholders rather than being the responsibility of a single stakeholder. We intend this guide to be a training resource for FLR facilitators who have a broad approach to land management. The guide is also aimed at anyone who implements FLR in a specific country or local context. Thus, policymakers and practitioners considering FLR commitments can use this guide to gain an understanding of the complexities of actual implementation.

This study provides an overview and guidelines for rehabilitation of mangroves and other coastal forests. The guidelines include the rationale for rehabilitation; choice of species; site selection and preparation; propagation and planting; monitoring and tending; and case studies. The case studies provide useful lessons of success and failure of past and on-going projects in coastal forest rehabilitation. The overall manual includes introductory chapters on coastal forests (mangrove forests, beach and dune forests, and forests of coral islands), natural hazards (tsunamis, tropical cyclones, coastal erosion and sea-level rise), and the protective roles of coastal forests. The manual is the final output of the ISME/ITTO Pre-Project on Restoration of Mangroves and other Coastal Forests damaged by Tsunamis and other Natural Hazards in the Asia-Pacific Region. Outputs of the project include: 1) An assessment report on the degree of degradation and recovery of the forests; 2) Establishment of six one-hectare pilot plots for demonstrating best practice rehabilitation techniques; and 3) A five-year Mangrove Rehabilitation Management (MRM) Plan or the affected forest areas.

Forest landscape restoration (FLR) provides a complementary framework to sustainable forest management and the ecosystem approach in landscapes where forest loss has caused a decline in the quality of ecosystem services. This book has been written by a team of experts from a wide variety of institutions coordinated by ITTO and IUCN. It explains the FLR concept and describes its main elements in chapters on adaptive management, landscape mosaics, landscape dynamics, stakeholder approaches, the identification of site-level options, hands-on site-level forest restoration and rehabilitation strategies, scenario modelling, and monitoring and evaluation. The result is by far the most comprehensive and easy-to-understand treatment of FLR yet written.