Our Five -Year Integrated Vegetation Management Plan
Wildfire resilience isn’t a one-and-done project—it’s a process, built over time, across entire landscapes.
​
Along with community outreach and education around home hardening and defensible space design, AFSC’s Five-Year Plan is key to building a fire-resilient Altadena.
Our Five-Year Plan is a coordinated approach to protecting Altadena’s foothill communities by restoring fire-adapted ecosystems. Beginning in Millard Canyon and expanding across Altadena’s northern boundary, this work brings together the science-based land management practices of GIS mapping, hand and mechanical thinning, prescribed grazing, soil regeneration, and native plant restoration. This is more than risk reduction—it’s a long-term investment in a healthier, more balanced landscape, designed to make our community more fire resilient.
Year One — Demonstrate
The plan begins with a 15-acre pilot plan in Millard Canyon, with high risk areas and treatments informed by GIS mapping. Embedded within the larger 15-acre treatment zone will be a dedicated one-acre regenerative restoration and monitoring site designed to evaluate how soil restoration and ecological regeneration techniques may support long-term wildfire resilience. This one-acre demonstration area will function as a focused research, monitoring, and education component of the broader pilot project.
This first phase establishes a coordinated system of assessment, fuel reduction, land stewardship, and regenerative recovery—built to scale across Altadena’s northern boundary.
Thinning
Initiate targeted hand and mechanical thinning to remove ladder fuels and restore defensible structure.
Grazing
Introduce targeted and managed grazing to maintain low fuel loads and access steep, high-risk terrain.
Soils
Apply regenerative soil treatments to stabilize degraded ground and begin rebuilding moisture retention.
Natives
Begin native plant restoration to reestablish fire-adapted plant communities.
Year Two — Stabilize
After the first phase of active treatment, the land begins to respond.
Year Two centers on stabilizing soil, vegetation, and fuel conditions—ensuring that early gains are protected and reinforced through ongoing care and observation.
Expand
Expand grazing rotations to maintain treatment areas naturally.
Monitor
Monitor soil health, erosion control, and vegetation response.
Refine
Refine treatment zones using real-time observations and seasonal conditions.
Strengthen
Strengthen partnerships with local crews, landowners, and agencies.
Year Three — Connect
By Year Three, the work expands beyond individual treatment areas to form a connected system
across the landscape. This phase focuses on linking fuel reduction efforts into a continuous corridor—improving wildfire defense, ecological function, and operational efficiency.
What began as a pilot now becomes a network, strengthening resilience at a community scale.
Extend
Extend treatments laterally along Altadena’s northern boundary.
Link
Link previously
treated zones into a continuous fuel-managed corridor.
Grow
Increase capacity through workforce training and grazing infrastructure.
Measure
Integrate data
mapping and aerial analysis to guide expansion.
Year Four — Scale
What began as a pilot now moves with momentum. Year Four is where the model scales.
The thinning-grazing-regenerative soil-native plant program expands into additional high-risk areas, building a connected system of resilience.
Deploy
Deploy the model across additional
high-risk canyons
and slopes.
Standardize
Standardize
operations for efficiency, safety, and repeatability.
Deepen
Deepen regenerative practices to improve long-term landscape resilience.
Educate
Activate community participation
through education
and visibility.
Year Five — Sustain
By Year Five, the foundation for resiliency is set. The focus turns to an ongoing stewardship model—maintained through grazing, monitoring, and adaptive management. The work continues, season after season, as part of a system of care.
Maintain
Transition from
pilot to permanent stewardship system.
Manage
Manage landscapes through ongoing grazing, monitoring, and adaptive management.
Replicate
Establish Altadena as a replicable model for community-scale wildfire resilience.
Share
Create a long-term framework that is ecologically sound, economically viable, and locally rooted.
Integrated Vegetation Management Glossary
Understanding the language of land management is an essential first step in doing the work well. Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) brings together ecology, fire science, agriculture, and land stewardship—fields that each carry their own terminology. This glossary is designed to provide clear, accessible definitions for the terms you’ll encounter throughout this site, helping you navigate concepts with confidence and consistency. Whether you’re a landowner, practitioner, policymaker, or community member, this resource aims to bridge technical knowledge and practical application. By building a shared vocabulary, we can better communicate, collaborate, and implement thoughtful vegetation management strategies that reduce wildfire risk, support ecosystem health, and strengthen long-term resilience.
A strategic, science-based approach to managing vegetation using a combination of methods—such as grazing, hand and mechanical work, and ecological restoration—to reduce wildfire risk while supporting ecosystem health.
The planned use of livestock (such as goats or sheep) to selectively reduce grasses, brush, and invasive plants, lowering fuel loads and promoting more fire-resilient landscapes.
The removal or reduction of dense vegetation using hand trimming methods combined with tools or machinery (e.g., chainsaws, masticators) to decrease fuel that increases wildfire intensity and improve access for maintenance and emergency response.
Practices that rebuild soil health—such as compost application, mulch layering, and microbial inoculation—to improve water retention, increase carbon storage, and support resilient plant communities.
The process of reintroducing locally adapted native species to restore ecological balance, enhance biodiversity, and create landscapes better suited to withstand fire, drought, and climate stress.
The amount of combustible vegetation (grasses, shrubs, trees, and debris) present in an area, which directly influences wildfire behavior and intensity.
Vegetation that allows fire to climb from the ground into tree canopies, increasing the likelihood of severe, fast-moving crown fires.
A managed area around structures where vegetation is reduced or modified to slow fire spread and provide firefighters a safer zone to defend homes.
Non-native plants that spread aggressively, often increasing fire risk by creating dense, continuous fuels and outcompeting fire-resilient native vegetation.
The ongoing, repeated treatment schedule (e.g., seasonal grazing, periodic thinning) required to sustain vegetation management outcomes over time and prevent fuel re-accumulation.