Innovation Landscapes of the Southwest

The Innovation Landscapes of the Southwest are interrelated landscapes within the Innovation Landscapes Network, that accelerate innovative science, technology, and solutions for adaptation to wildfire and other natural hazard risks on distinct landscapes in the Southwest: Arizona, Southern California, and the Mojave Desert.

Land Management Challenges in the Southwest United States

Land managers in the Southwest urgently need actionable science, innovative technologies, and landscape-scale solutions to more effectively reduce risks from natural hazards (such as wildfire, flooding, extreme heat, drought, and erosion) that threaten Department of Defense assets. However, cost-effective and data-informed pathways to adapt to and manage wildfire and increase resilience to other extreme events are limited. The Innovation Landscapes of the Southwest (IL-SW) are interrelated landscapes within the Innovation Landscapes Network (ILN), that accelerate innovative science, technology, and solutions for adaptation to wildfire and other natural hazard risks on distinct landscapes in the Southwest: Arizona, Southern California, and the Mojave Desert.

Mission and Goals

Military Readiness. Natural hazards like wildfire and flooding pose significant threats to military missions. Even installations not directly affected by flames or extreme rainfall can experience lost training days and infrastructure impacts due to smoke-related air quality issues, contamination of water resources by fire debris, and damage to housing or critical infrastructure off-installation. These impacts often require expensive repairs to restore range utility for military training and readiness. The Department of Defense provides the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other partners connections to military installations to implement wildland fire adaptation technologies and land management approaches on DoD lands to ensure mission readiness is maintained amidst these threats. For example, the USGS works with the Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape to develop new wildfire fuel monitoring technologies and evaluate wildfire risk and fuel treatment effectiveness. At Marine Corps Air Stations Miramar, California and Yuma, Arizona, IL-SW partners are piloting regenerative grazing approaches to restore landscape resilience through vegetation and wildfire fuel management.

Resilience. Partners utilize new technologies and demonstration projects to build resilience through nature-based solutions (NbS) that mitigate erosion, extreme heat, drought, and fire risk. At IL-SW demonstration sites, landscape-level NbS are actively being implemented to evaluate and quantify benefits like infrastructure risk reduction, habitat improvement, and more cost-effective management. For wildfire resilience, IL-SW also refine and transfer existing fuel, fire behavior, and ecological system models that partners validate across fire-prone landscapes to advance resilience in ways that are unique to each landscapes’ needs.

Innovation. IL-SW leverage Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP)’s and Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP)’s existing science, technology, and knowledge investment in the Southwest, totaling over $100M since 2015. These projects have developed solutions to strengthen military preparedness to extreme weather events within arid to semi-arid regions, increase data resolution for ecosystem management and fuels modeling, improve fire and smoke behavior modeling, and manage invasive, threatened, and endangered species. IL-SW landscapes serve as testbeds for innovation as local natural resource managers evaluate and provide feedback on tools currently in development (e.g., fuels and fire behavior models.) Additionally, IL-SW integrate Navy and Marine Corps’ project investments into its landscape-scale collaboration among Federal agencies. Federal and other land management partners leverage IL-SW’s collaboration opportunities to inform and deploy innovative techniques, provide shared opportunities for demonstration projects, and test and refine tools for natural hazards adaptation.

Rain from Tropical Storm Hilary causes a dirt road to partially collapse at Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California, Aug. 21, 2023. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Anna Higman)

SERDP investigators conduct experimental fires to study the effects of varied prescribed fire ignition patterns on emissions. IL-SW intends to scale work similar to this SERDP project, to encourage the use of prescribed burning to minimize risk of wildfires and manage fire-dependent ecosystems.

Our Approach

Landscape-scale Application and Scaling Solutions. Partners in Arizona and Southern California are co-developing landscape-scale prioritization and adaptation frameworks to guide wildland fire planning and treatment implementation. Technologies developed for other Innovation Landscapes that advance land management practices in fire dependent ecosystems (e.g., Eastern Innovation Landscape Network) can also be customized for Southwest landscapes to facilitate and expedite this process. Collaborators continue to identify new approaches for improved natural resource management across the landscapes.

Landscape Partnerships. IL-SW leverage existing collaborations among diverse partners to strengthen innovation and bolster response to natural hazards. For instance, IL-SW are facilitating an existing partnership that has focused on the development of a conservation strategy for rapidly disappearing montane forest landscapes in Southern California. The effort also actively coordinates with the State of California’s Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program and Governor’s Task Force on Wildfire Resilience to coordinate efforts and amplify the voice of local leadership. IL-SW are also leveraging USGS partnerships with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the San Carlos and White Mountain Apache Tribes, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Arizona.

Current Innovation Landscapes of the Southwest

Leading landscapes in the Southwest have enabling conditions, such as staff, capacity, and the opportunity to accelerate science, data, and technology transfer to landscape partners and land managers. While partner participation varies across all the landscapes, the goal of IL-SW is to provide science and technology expertise and connections to DoD installations to scale wildfire resilience across landscapes.

Arizona. In Arizona, partners are co-developing, integrating, and applying innovative fuel, fire behavior, and ecological system models to evaluate management strategies and treatment effectiveness. These state-of-the art models include: 1) 3D fuels characterization tools derived from LiDAR, paired with nationally available 3D fuels datasets, such as FastFuels, to more accurately represent the influence of vegetative structure on fire behavior, and 2) “next generation” fire behavior models, including QUIC-Fire and BurnPro3D, due to their unique ability to account for fire-atmospheric feedbacks and the complex ignition patterns typical of prescribed fires. The USGS engages the Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, partners in the Lower Colorado River Basin, and others to demonstrate and scale models and tools across a variety of desert landscapes. Novel uses of these models and tools to predict fire effects, improve smoke dispersion models, and inform ecosystem process models will be further explored and scaled to DoD installations.

Southern California. In Southern California, IL-SW efforts are leveraging partnerships around montane forest conservation efforts and supporting the goals of state, federal, and local partners engaged in California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force. Montane forests in Southern California have experienced the greatest loss in land cover in the state due to drought and wildfires. The surrounding lower elevation landscapes of chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and oak woodlands are affected by fire regime changes and invasive exotic grass encroachment. As a biodiversity hotspot that is also home to 25 million people and numerous military installations (notably at the nexus of MCB Camp Pendleton and MCAS Miramar), there is an urgent need to support military preparedness by protecting ecological landscapes on installations in these communities. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service’s Wildfire Risk Reduction strategy prioritizes ignition reduction, strategic fuel breaks, and community preparedness to enhance the wildfire resilience of Southern California’s landscapes. These priorities combined with a landscape-scale focus on restoring and maintaining healthy ecosystems and conserving imperiled species guide IL-SW efforts.

Mojave Desert. Across the Department of Navy's largest testing and training ranges in the Southwest, IL-SW capacity is enabling the implementation of innovative and cost-effective solutions to reduce erosion, infiltrate groundwater, mitigate dust, and manage wildfire risk. Partners, through SERDP, ESTCP, Navy, and Marine Corps funded efforts, are developing and testing innovative approaches in stormwater management, biocrust and native vegetation restoration, invasive species control, and wildfire fuel reduction. In the Mojave Desert, at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake and Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, the IL-SW have coordinated technical partnerships between Department of Navy and the US Army Corps of Engineers - Engineering With Nature Program and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit to inform NbS test locations and quantify management efficacy. IL-SW are also leveraging and demonstrating the use of innovative contracting mechanisms to accelerate the pace and increase the scale of adaptation for infrastructure resilience.

Map representing the presence of “Sky Island” montane forests at elevation and DoD lands in SoCal landscape.

Partners meet on a quarterly basis through the Innovation Landscapes of the Southwest Community of Practice (IL-SW CoP). Please contact ILN@noblis.org if you’d like additional information on the IL-SW CoP.

Meet the Coordinators

Seth Munson, Ph.D., Arizona Innovation Landscape Coordinator and Science Lead

Email: smunson@usgs.gov

Seth Munson is an ecosystem ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey Southwest Biological Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. He helps lead the Innovation Landscape in Arizona, including advancing partnerships, developing new research directions, and delivering decision-support tools. His research focuses on how ecosystems respond to drought, wildfire, invasive species, and land-use to assist fire and land management decision-making.

Megan Jennings, Ph.D., Southern California Innovation Landscape Science Lead

Email: mjennings@sdsu.edu

Megan is a Research Ecologist and co-director of the Institute for Ecological Monitoring and Management at San Diego State University. Her research focuses on conservation, land management, and adaptation with a goal of supporting science-informed management and planning to increase the resilience of our natural landscapes and local communities. Prior to her career in research, Megan worked for over a decade in natural resource and land management with the U.S. Forest Service and has carried those experiences into her work at the interface of science and management.

Ms. Sophia Green, Southern California Innovation Landscape Coordinator

Email: sdgreen@sdsu.edu

Sophia Green serves as a coordinator for the Southern California Innovation Landscape Network. She brings her background in landscape-scale project management, policy and planning, and partner management and facilitation to SDSU to advance the SoCal innovation landscape towards the shared vision of partnership-driven land stewardship and mission readiness.

Mr. Jesse Ross, Mojave Desert Innovation Landscape Coordinator

Email: jesse.j.ross15civ@us.navy.mil

Jesse Ross serves as the Department of Navy’s coordinator for the Innovation Landscapes of the Southwest. Jesse works with researchers, land managers, and partners to develop solutions where Navy and Marine Corps installations and ranges are experiencing the greatest impacts from flooding, fire, and other extreme weather events.