MOUNTAIN SNOW TO THRIVING DESERTS: NEW CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS FOR MANAGING OUR FORESTS FOR WATERSHED SERVICES

Payments for ecosystems services and watershed investment programs have created new solutions for sustaining resilient upland forests to support downstream surface-water and groundwater uses. Water from upland forests supports not only a significant percentage of the public water supplies in the U.S., but also extensive riparian, aquatic, and groundwater dependent ecosystems. Many rare, endemic, threatened, and endangered species are supported by the surface-water and groundwater generated from the forested uplands. In the Ponderosa pine forests of the Southwestern U.S., Euro-American forest management practices, coupled with climate change, has significantly impacted aquifer functionality by increasing vegetation cover and associated evapotranspiration and decreasing runoff and groundwater recharge. A large Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program project known as the Four Forests Restoration Initiative is developing large, landscape scale processes to improve aquifer functionality. However, there are challenges in financing the initial forest treatments and subsequent maintenance treatments while garnering supportive public opinion to forest thinning projects. A solution called the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project is utilizing City tax dollars collected through a public bond to finance forest treatments. Exit polling from the bond election documented the reasons for the 73 % affirmative vote on the bond measure. These forest treatments have included in their actions restoration of associated ephemeral stream channels and spring ecosystems, but resources still need to be identified for these actions. Recent attention to springs and other groundwater dependent ecosystems has led forests to incorporate these ecosystems into their forest plan revisions, providing potential new solutions for justifying funding through traditional and non-traditional mechanisms.