Services of North Coast Resource Management
Forestry Services
Biological Services
NCRM has provided a broad range of professional forestry and land management consulting services to private and public sector landowners since 1982. Services include the preparation of timber harvest plans, non-industrial timber management plans, timber and land appraisal, timberland and ranch management, reforestation, and biological consultation. NCRM's forestry staff of five registered professional foresters, a professional consulting biologist, and additional forestry support staff enables us to complete projects in a timely and professional manner, with most work done "in house." Our goal at NCRM is to provide our clientele effective forest management solutions in today's complex regulatory environment.
Timberland Management
Effective forest management involves planning, design and implementation.NCRM will work with you to develop a plan to meet your specific goals. Our assistance may include timberland inventory, timber harvest planning, timber harvest sale administration, biological assessment, reforestation, erosion control, or precise mapping with GPS units in the field. Our knowledgeable staff can provide an integrated timberland management solution.
THP and NTMP Preparation
Our forestry staff has a great deal of experience in timber harvest planning. As the complexity of information required to provide effective timber harvest planning continually increases, so has NCRM's technical ability to comply with the required complexity. Our forestry staff can design and implement a harvest strategy that meets the landowner's objectives while providing protection to timberland values other than timber.
Timber and Land Appraisal
NCRM provides a full range of timber and land appraisal services. NCRM can design and implement a sampling design to meet your needs. Such sampling designs may be intended to appraise timber quantity and quality for property sale purposes, valuation of timber for conservation easement purposes, or as a means of assessing timberland resources for forest management purposes.
Reforestation
NCRM has twenty years of experience in timberland reforestation and timber stand improvement work. Our staff can provide expert advice in terms of appropriate stand treatments designed to enhance timber stand growth or to increase conifer stocking levels. We can assist in locating appropriate regeneration materials, and can provide custom grown seedlings for reforestation use. We have extensive experience in preparing, negotiating, and supervising reforestation projects.
NCRM provides a wide range of biological services primarily centered on the survey for and development of protection measures for threatened and endangered species in California. Our staff Private Consulting Biologist is certified by the California Department of Fish and Game to prepare Northern Spotted Owl consultations for timber harvest plans, and is qualified to provide biological survey as well as prepare biological reports for a number of other species including the Marbled Murrelet and Northern Goshawk.
Private Lands Wildlife Management Plans
NCRM has experience in the preparation and administration of wildlife management plans under the State of California's Private Lands Wildlife Habitat Enhancement and Management Area Program (PLM). The PLM program's intent is to protect and improve wildlife habitat by encouraging landholders to manage their property for the benefit of fish and wildlife. The program offers landowners biologically sound incentives to utilize wildlife for recreational purposes on their property. These incentives include flexible seasons, which result in high-quality hunting opportunities.
Expert Witness
NCRM staff is available to provide expert witness and litigation support for forestry related matters.
Watershed Assessment/Restoration
The Natural Resource Management staff at NCRM is dedicated to assisting landowners in the design and implementation of watershed assessment and restoration plans. Projects include both long-term plans focused on the restoration of an entire watershed, to site-specific projects focused on the improvement of a stream reach.
Long-term restoration plans are developed in three phases. Phase one includes an overall watershed assessment, which determines general watershed health and identifies specific sites that require "restoration." Site specific restoration measures are developed for each identified site during phase two and then implemented over time in phase three. In addition to implementing the restoration projects on a given time schedule, it is important to monitor past projects to determine if the intended goals have been achieved, and if not to look for ways to improve upon project design.
Monitoring will ensure that the maximum benefit is derived from restoration activities.Site specific restoration projects are often completed for small landowners (1/2 to 10 acres) that have a stream reach on their property. These restoration projects often focus on stream bank stability to prevent loss of land and reduce sediment inputs. These projects are generally completed within one year.
Some examples of watershed restoration projects are as follows:
- Abandoning poorly located roads, upgrading existing roads and improving or abandoning watercourse crossings on roads will significantly reduce sediment inputs within a watershed.
- Fencing around a stream reach to prevent grazing within the riparian area will result in decreased sediment inputs, decreased water temperature and improve near water habitat provided by native riparian vegetation.
- Structures such as root wads, logs and vegetative fencing strategically placed in the stream channel can prevent downcutting of the streambed, increase pool habitat and cover for salmon and trout, and increase bank stability.
These are just a few examples of restoration projects that can be used to improve water quality and fish habitat. NCRM is committed to working with landowners to improve the quality of streams and can advise landowners as to the public funding available to assist in restoration activities.
Archaeological Services
NCRM offers a wide range of both analytical and management oriented consulting services for archaeological resources, including: intensive and/or project specific archaeological survey; archaeological site and resource documentation; site testing and excavation; archival, ethnographic and historic research; ownership or property-wide cultural resource sensitivity analysis; artifact illustration, faunal and lithic analysis; obsidian hydration analysis; and cultural resource management plans for small and large tracts of land. We specialize in providing cost-effective fulfillment of state and federal archaeological regulations concerning zoning conversions, timber harvest plans, vineyard development, and real estate subdivisions.
Over the past five years NCRM personnel have archaeologically surveyed over 50,000 acres of public and private lands, and recorded or documented over 300 historic and prehistoric archaeological sites and resources. Our staff has extensive experience throughout Western North America, especially in northern and central California. We have developed close working relationships with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF), Native American groups, federal and state officials, and are able to routinely complete project goals within expedient and specified time-frames. Our experience is invaluable in guiding clients through the various regulations and laws governing cultural resources, including California Environmental Quality Act, Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, the CDF Forest Practice Rules, and additional state, federal, and county regulations.
Our current responsibilities include: an ongoing contract to provide all aspects of cultural resource management on over 75,000 acres of private timberlands, including over 200 prehistoric and historic archaeological sites; fulfillment of the archaeological requirements for several large vineyard conversion projects; and the implementation of state and federal sponsored management plans, such as the CDF Stewardship Incentive Plan, to enhance and protect cultural resources. Previous projects have included: the survey, research and development of a cultural resource management plan for a State Forest in northeast California, and GPS/GIS based archaeological support for the search for Amelia Earhart.
NCRM has enabled the integration of cultural resources with the Global Positioning System and Geographic Information System technologies. We can provide archaeological data, including stratified subsurface excavation, within a cohesive GIS framework, further enhancing the effectiveness of cultural resource management. This includes the mapping of resources to less than 1cm accuracy, and the compilation of two- and three-dimensional, spatial representations of archaeological sites, excavation units, features, and entire project areas. It is the stated goal of NCRM to provide cost-effective archaeological services to clients while also preserving, promoting and enhancing the prehistory and history of California and Western North America.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
GIS combines layers, or levels of information about a place giving you a better understanding of that place. GIS allows the user to define layers of related types of information depending upon your purpose.
For example:
- GIS could help find the proper location for a new road.
- Detect environmental changes due to patterns of use.
- Determine the extent of your service area.
A few of the numerous benefits of GIS are:
- Tools that support the decision making process, not merely an automatic decision system.
- Improve organization and resource management by sharing common data sets.
- Provide a visualization of concepts in the form of a map.
By entering basemap data (contours, political features, Township, Range, Section lines, UTM ticks, etc.), and then importing data from GPS into the GIS, resource managers have a powerful tool for analysis.
