Developing a Regional Restoration Plan for the Central San Joaquin Valley

This project is a partnership between UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and Sequoia Riverlands Trust (SRT) to create a regional restoration plan for the central San Joaquin Valley. SRT is a non-profit land trust headquartered in Tulare County that’s been working for over two decades to protect and restore natural and working lands across the Southern Sierra, San Joaquin Valley, and Carrizo Plain. This project aligns with the Regional Restoration Planning and Partnership (R2P2) component of the Sierra San Joaquin Jobs (S2J2) grant that SRT received, which focuses on:

1)    Incorporating, consolidating and building upon past regional conservation and restoration plans

2)    Addressing and filling gaps in existing knowledge with consideration of regional goals and needs, including needs around ecosystem restoration, sustainable water management, and community economic resilience

3)    Engaging partners such as tribal and community groups, resource conservation districts, government agencies and other non-profit organizations, and representing these perspectives in the final plan

The target region of the restoration plan will encompass the counties of Tulare, Kings, Fresno and Madera, and will focus on challenges unique to these counties. These counties together comprise one of the highest producing agricultural regions in the United States in terms of GDP. The result of the sustained widescale agricultural activity in the region has been an unsustainable depletion of the region’s groundwater reserves, and a year-to-year decrease in biodiversity. Additionally, widely documented adverse human health impacts have occurred due to poor water and air quality associated with agricultural activities in the region. These impacts disproportionally affect the majority non-white population of the region.

To support SRT’s initiative, the project will conduct a GIS-based analysis and produce a series of spatial planning documents that identify priority areas for conservation and restoration across the four-county region. These maps will be reflective of a regional-scale vision grounded in existing hydrological, ecological, and socioeconomic data, and will prioritize areas of interest and corresponding restoration activities and strategies. This will incorporate a tiered set of restoration strategies ranging from full restoration on conservation lands to partial restoration or on-farm practices on private lands, as influenced by the region’s varying land ownership and use contexts. It will also include a technical guidance narrative for each targeted area and chosen restoration strategy. Furthermore, the project will incorporate detailed documentation of research methods and a stakeholder engagement report grounded in both science and community priorities.