Resources

The Nevada County Natural Resources Report (NRR) is a 600-page scientific assessment of the county's natural resources, watersheds, GIS database, and aerial photographs. It was the primary product of the Natural Heritage 2020 project, a collaborative effort authorized by the Nevada County Board of Supervisors in May 2000 and carried out in partnership with the Sierra Business Council.

The project's goal was to develop a comprehensive strategy to identify, manage, and protect natural habitats, plant and animal species diversity, and open space resources in Nevada County. Over 35 volunteers from forestry, agriculture, business, development, and recreation collaborated, alongside a seven-member Scientific Advisory Committee that peer-reviewed the scientific data.

The Board of Supervisors voted to complete and publish the NRR in May 2002, with the final report delivered in July 2002. The Yuba Watershed Institute has since converted the original HTML files into a modern web application and hosts it here to make the report freely accessible.

The Middle Yuba River watershed (~134,500 acres) sits between two active forest-health planning efforts: the North Yuba Forest Partnership to the north and Nevada County’s community wildfire planning to the south. This map consolidates project data from multiple partners to show where existing and planned treatments have occurred — and where the planning gap remains.

Layers include the North Yuba Forest Partnership ROD 2 final treatment units and ROD 3 footprint; Tahoe National Forest South Yuba fuels projects (Bear Trap, Cruzonville, Gastonville, Highway 20, Washington, WNCCDP/Deer Creek, and the South Yuba Roadside Fuelbreaks); YWI landscape resilience projects (‘Inimim Forest, Round Mountain, Little Deer Creek, and South Yuba Rim); Nevada Irrigation District (NID) restoration projects; Yuba Water Agency fuels treatment; regional and county agency projects; and public and protected land ownership from CAL FIRE FRAP. All layers can be toggled on and off; click any feature for details.

The Priority Planning Console builds on the Middle Yuba Watershed Forest Projects map to answer a forward-looking question: given a budget and a set of priorities, where should the next treatments go? The watershed is divided into roughly 900 hexagonal candidate “stands,” each carrying real, precomputed attributes — gentle-slope share (USGS 3DEP DEM), wildfire hazard potential and risk to potential structures (USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities), distance to roads and communities (OpenStreetMap), land ownership, and proximity to existing project footprints.

Each eligible stand (inside the watershed, mostly under 40% slope, and outside existing footprints) is scored by a transparent weighted sum over de-duplicated criteria — fire intensity, in-situ community risk, community protection (fireshed transmission), and optional burn-likelihood, connectivity and co-benefit weights — each normalized by percentile rank across the watershed, with access and treatability applied as a feasibility gate rather than weights. Stands are ranked and grown into contiguous project areas — seeded at the highest-priority ground and accreting neighbors — up to a budget, project count, and optional target/minimum project size. Adjusting any weight or constraint re-runs the prioritization live, and a weights-sum-to-100% bar plus a weight-sensitivity view make the tradeoffs explicit.

The console is inspired by the selection logic of the U.S. Forest Service ForSys model used in Planscape, but it is a lightweight local prototype — not Planscape — and a planning aid, not a treatment prescription. It does not model treatment effects over time or the full range of ecological co-benefits. Because the Middle Yuba lies within Planscape’s Sierra Nevada coverage, the authoritative multi-benefit and outcome modeling can be run there directly.

CEQA Decision Pathways is a single-page web reference that replaces a dense two-page PDF with something easier to read, share, and navigate. An interactive decision tree walks through five Yes/No questions and recommends the right pathway, while an exemption menu lays out the statutory, categorical, programmatic, and special-purpose options as full cards with eligibility, triggers, common uses, and links to the underlying statute.

The reference is current as of June 2026 and reflects the 2025 legislative session, including SB 131, AB 404, and the March 2025 Emergency Proclamation framework. It also includes practitioner-level working notes on how each pathway maps to the kinds of projects local stakeholders are actually running, plus direct links to the Public Resources Code, CEQA Guidelines, 2025 bill text, the CalVTP PEIR, CDFW SERP, FHSZ maps, and CEQAnet.

Prepared by the Environmental Compliance Subcommittee of the Nevada County Quarterly Wildfire Stakeholders Group (QWSG). This is a working summary, not legal advice — statutes and guidelines change, so verify the current text and consult counsel before relying on any pathway for a specific project.