RFFCP Regions/WIP Geographies

RFFCP Regions also known as WIP Geographies of the Watershed Improvement Program (WIP) Capacity Assessments.<div><div><br /></div><div><div><b>About these boundaries</b></div><div>Originally developed by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) to help focus
regional investments by multiple agencies participating in the Sierra
Nevada Strategic Investment Program (SNSIP). These geographic areas are
also used by the conservancy for its WIP Capacity Assessment (currently Regional Forest and Fire Capacity
Program) reporting. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The original description presented to SNSIP partners: <br /></div><div><br /></div><font size='4'><span style='font-weight:bold;'>How these geographies were developed.<br /></span></font><br /><div style='text-align:center;'><font size='4'><span style='font-weight:bold;'>The SNSIP geographies were developed with the following process:</span></font><br /></div><br /><ul><li>The
25 million acre Sierra Nevada region was broken down into seven
actionable geographic areas, based on SNC’s experience with the
Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative (TCSI) and similar in size to TCSI.  </li><li>Boundaries are based on watershed boundaries, grouped by biogeography and where water flows. </li><li> Boundaries
are based on the boundaries of existing collaboratives mapped as part
of current and previous SNC efforts, to build on already successful and
productive on-the-ground efforts. </li></ul><div><span style='font-weight:bold;'>Additional provenance detail:</span><br /></div><p>The SNSIP / RFFCP / WIP Capacity geographies are groups of Watershed Improvement Program (WIP) watersheds.
And hence build on that program. The groupings of the watersheds were chosen based on
institutional factors, e.g. current and past forest collaboratives and
downstream water stakeholders, as well as similar ecosystems. These variables
were balanced as best  possible without fracturing WIP watersheds. There
was an additional desire to have the geographies of similar in size to
the TCSI, as that was the expected model. To again maintain the integrity of
WIP watersheds the TCSI PLUS was the combination of the original TCSI and the
downstream parts of the American, Bear and Yuba watersheds.</p>

Compared to the WIP watersheds the geographies have been
mapped at the HUC12 level detail found in the NHD. This was chosen based on the
approach by Malcom North et.al  to characterize  the HUC12 watershed
as an effective “fire shed.” <div><br /></div></div></div>