Social and Ecological Resiliency Across the Landscape (SERAL)

The SERAL project is federal project addressing fuel reduction on public and private lands in Tuolumne County. The private lands within the approximately 118,000 acre project area will be surveyed prior to fuel reduction activities by contractors who will work to restore forest resilience and sequester greenhouse gases within the Tuolumne and Stanislaus River Watersheds. Contractors will execute the project by using mechanical thinning, mastication, hand work, chipping, prescribed fire, and biomass utilization processes, along with reforestation in certain areas as necessary. Contractors will work in distinct project areas with a specific scope of work that includes the best management practices for that area. Project areas will be treated simultaneously over a five-year period. Some treatment areas will be visible from public right of ways, however there are no designated scenic highways/roads within Tuolumne County. Biological and cultural resource surveys will be conducted prior to project implementation on each area and sensitive areas, such as streams or wetlands, will be flagged for avoidance by contractors completing the fuel reduction work. The purpose of the project is to reduce accumulated fuels and shift vegetation structure and composition in the forest to improve alignment with their natural range in variation (NVR). A forested landscape aligned with its NRV is more resilient to many potential disturbances, such as large-scale high severity fire, insects, disease, drought, and climate change.