REPORTS
California faces a range of threats to the critical ecosystem services on which the state and its population rely - including global issues, like climate change, to more local challenges, like species encroachment, natural resource exploitation, warming waters, novel pathogens and human development. Extreme climate events (like drought and severe wildfire) are among the most devastating. In fact, estimates show that the rapid pace of change to California’s habitats outpaces species’ ability to adapt.
Genomics tools, like translocation and gene editing, offer potential solutions to accelerate species adaptation, protect carbon stores, reduce water and soil contamination. But they also raise novel risks, limited field trial data, socio-cultural concerns and governance challenges.
In this report, we offer prioritized R+D pathways -- and provide a place-based, values-driven case-study for the advancement of biotechnology research in the dual context of urgent ecological challenges and technological uncertainties.
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WILDFIRE CONTEXT
There has been a significant rise in incidence, size and severity of severe wildfires over the past 40 years - especially in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades regions - and we expect this trend to continue between now and 2050. We estimate an increase of 2-3°C by 2100, much of that before 2050, and a significant (50%+/-) increase in fire intensity, frequency and severity.
California has set ambitious goals for increases in beneficial fire and ecological thinning - both critical tools in healing overcrowded and high-risk landscapes. However, by any standard, we are failing to meet these goals. Federal and State agencies disproportionately prioritize funding for wildfire response (as opposed to reducing risk in advance or building resilience after), there is a back-log of critical forest restoration efforts which might mitigate risk and help to reverse this trend.
With more extreme fires comes more fire fighting - which means over-loading ecosystems with unnaturally high loads of nutrients like phosphorous. This contaminates water, affects biodiversity, slows regrowth, contributes to hazardous algal blooms.
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The ramifications are substantial. High-intensity wildfires can convert forested ecosystems into shrublands, or native shrublands into invasive grasses, devastating biodiversity. Wildfires burn deep into soils, causing chemical changes in soils and damaging watersheds, increasing erosion and decreasing vital groundwater stores. Severe fires move at a speed and heat that devastates both pollinator habitats and pollinators themselves. As, VPD effect increases and soil conditions worsen, we may see exacerbated vegetation-climate mismatch following fires - potentially increasing the vulnerability of important ecosystem services.
BIOTECHNOLOGY CONTEXT
Genomics sciences, synthetic biology, and precision engineering hold the capacity to replenish and protect soils, provide methods for accurate and time-delimited understanding of complex ecosystems - how they change, adapt or degrade in the context of extreme fire. With these tools, we can accelerate the adaptation of our ecosystems to changing climatic conditions, restore degraded habitats, clean contaminated waters and soils, and improve the end-products created from forest biomass.
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The nearest term opportunities for biotechnology R+D to deliver clear and measurable applied outcomes will be in those areas where the economic, political and cultural license to operate is the highest: leveraging existing regulation and known markets to demonstrate viable approaches and, through these demonstrations, de-risk policy change and investment in replicable and scalable solutions. The solutions we explore here are driven by precise inquiries which aim for applied solutions to discrete problems.
Two of the many approaches explored are now advancing through laboratory fellowships and industry partnerships. One focused on reducing the harm from fire fighting materials, the other focused on speeding post-fire regeneration -- both relying on the use of natively-occurring microbes and bacteria to do what they are already evolving to do.
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The first step is a better understanding of what species are present, and what functions they are serving, and under what pressures and conditions those functions shift or fail -- and, from there, looking to where we might replace harmful practices with improved alternatives; or where we might bolster the existing conditions in favor of resilience, regeneration or risk reduction.
A SNAPSHOT OF PATHWAYS TO RESILIENCE
In other words, how might biotechnology tools enable more good fire, and less bad fire, on our vulnerable California landscapes? ​
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Here are a few ideas (You can read the full report and all the potential pathways we examined, here).
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Resilience Following Severe Fire:
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Reduce nutrient-loading from mineral fire retardants through biological additives (microbes or bacteria coupled with heat-sensitive proteins) to existing retardants which reduce the amount of phosphorous that actually reaches ground water stores.
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Develop biological alternatives to retardants and surfactants (PFAs)
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Speed post-fire regeneration - possibly by as much as 8 years - using native bacteria which naturally emerge following high heat fires
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Reduce the Risk of High Severity Fire:
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Develop improved carbon-negative lignan products or processing methods, increase end-product value of woody biomass-based materials through improved hardening methods or new innovative uses in electronics
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Develop in-situ composting agents to support the healthy and beneficial on-site compositing of piled hazardous fuels using natively occurring bacteria and microbes
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Mitigate the risk of cheatgrass and other highly flammable species along high-ignition zones (like highway corridors) through either decreasing the competitive advantage of cheatgrasses, increasing the competitive advantage of native grasses with deeper roots and less oily/flammable above ground biomass
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Increase Beneficial Fire:
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Test and demonstrate ‘biological burn perimeters’ to act as heat reducing agents surrounding the edges of planned beneficial burns
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Research the potential of ‘heat dampening’ capacities for aerial and ground fire retardants to enable fire managers to support low heat burns effectively even during active fires. ​​
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Research and understand the ecosystem impacts of varying heats and heat depths to determine ecosystem and species shifts associated with post-fire resilience; identifying ideal beneficial burn temperatures and gaining knowledge about the precise species most associated with resilience.