Across Yolo County, most of land is privately owned. When wildfire impacts our landscape, it impacts pirvate landowners and threatens structures, often Private landowners play a vital role in reducing wildfire risk across Yolo County. Effective fuel management not only helps protect homes, agricultural operations, and infrastructure, but also supports healthy ecosystems, improves wildlife habitat, and can enhance the long-term resilience of woodlands and rangelands. Because Yolo County has a variety of landscapes, from oak woodlands and annual grasslands to riparian corridors and chaparral, fuel management practices should be tailored to local conditions and land management goals.
Understanding Wildfire Fuels
Wildfire fuels are any vegetation or organic material capable of burning. Dry, flashy fuels like dead grass are dangerous as they ignite more easily and burn quickly.
Wildfire fuels are commonly grouped into three categories:
- Ground fuels: Leaf litter, pine needles, dead branches, and decomposing organic matter.
- Surface fuels: Grasses, shrubs, brush, downed woody material, and small trees.
- Aerial (ladder and canopy) fuels: Tree branches, vines, and vegetation that allow fire to move from the ground into tree crowns.
Effective fuel management reduces the continuity and quantity of these fuels while maintaining ecological health.
Defensible Space Around Structures
Fuels management on your property should start with protecting structures. Defensible space reduces the likelihood of structure ignition and provides a safer area for firefighters to defend buildings. Defensible space is outlined in three different zones: Zone 0 (0 to 5 feet), Zone 1 (5 to 30 feet), and Zone 2 (30 to 100 feet). Each zone has varying levels of fuels management, but general recommended practices include:
- Remove dead vegetation and accumulated leaf litter near buildings and on roofs
- Prune tree branches to reduce ladder fuels and overhanging limbs
- Separate shrubs and trees to reduce horizontal fuel continuity
- Keep grasses mowed and green
Fuels Management Strategies
Landscapes in Yolo County in the high fire areas include oak woodland/foothill pine, oak savanna, annual grassland, riparian, rangeland, and agriculture. Management strategies vary depending on fuel loads, invasive weed pressure, and habitat type. Fuels management strategies relevant in Yolo County are outlined below.
Mechanical Limbing, Thinning, and Mowing
This includes chainsaw work, mastication, and selective pruning with a focus on ladder fuels, shrubs, and trees. Seasonal mowing of grasses before they full cure cuts them down and allows use of a mower outside of seasons when red flags are most likely to occur.
Prescribed Grazing
When mowing an area is too large of an undertaking, prescribed grazing using goats, sheep, and cattle can reduce fine fuel loads. Prescribed grazing for fuels management usually involves short duration, high intensity grazing with movable fencing to quickly move livestock through an area. Prescribed grazing can improve soil health and water infiltration.
Prescribed grazing can have higher per acre costs than other fuels management strategies. It’s generally recommended to have a larger acreage to graze by teaming up with neighbors or other nearby community members for a large footprint to lower costs and create a larger grazed footprint. Prescribed grazing is a good alternative to prescribed fire in areas that are very steep and hilly.
Shrub and Brush Management
Retaining patches of native shrubs preserves wildlife habitat while reducing fire hazards. In Yolo County, it’s generally not recommended to completely remove native shrub cover as it can result in type conversion from shrub to annual grassland.
Shrub management strategies include selective thinning, mechanical mastication, and selective thinning.
Prescribed Fire
Prescribed fire is the intentional, carefully planned use of fire under specific weather and environmental conditions to achieve land management objectives. Prescribed fire can reduce vegetation and wildfire fuel loads, control invasive plant species, recycle nutrients back into the soil, and promote native grasses and wildflowers.
Oak Woodland Health
Oak woodlands are adapted to high-frequency, low-intensity fire. Decades of fire suppression and introduction of invasive grasses have stressed these systems. Invasive grasses outcompete native species and are often more flammable than the native species they replace. Fostering oak woodland health includes protecting/encouraging oak regeneration, managing invasive grasses like barbed goatgrass, and monitoring for invasive insects.
To encourage oak regeneration, keep grazers out from the understory of oaks where regeneration potential is the highest. Caging young oak trees is recommended to prevent grazing animals from browsing on saplings.
Get in Touch
Are you interested in learning more about possible fuels management treatments on your property? Reach out to Tanya Meyer, Fire Resilience Program Manager, at meyer@yolorcd.org or call (530) 661-1688 ext 2. For inquiries about oak woodland management, reach out to Luis Corona, Project Manager, at corona@yolorcd.org or call (530) 661-1688.