Great Basin Institute - Nevada Conservation Corps - Evaluation Report 2019-2020

The Nevada Conservation Corps (NCC), a program of Great Basin Institute of University of Nevada, is an environmental service program dedicated to promoting field research and direct conservation service. The program supports Nevada’s communities and public lands through the deployment of forestry teams to mitigate fire threats, reduce the spread of invasive species, and restore and re-designate trails. Members perform environmental stewardship, natural resource monitoring, evaluation, and public outreach, while engaging in workforce development throughout the state. The program aims to improve 3,000 acres of at-risk ecosystems and improve 90 miles of trail while also collecting monitoring data.

Study Goals:
The goal of this study is to evaluate the impact and efficacy of wildfire fuels reduction on reducing wildfire risk for Nevada’s public lands. A pre-post quasi-experimental design (QED) study was conducted with a matched comparison group. The QED compared mean changes in fire regime condition class from pre-treatment to post-treatment for 35 project sites and for 35 untreated comparison sites.

Research Question:

• Did NCC fuels reduction treatments improve fire regime condition class (FRCC)and therefore reduce wildfire risk for Nevada’s public lands compared to similar sites where fuels were not treated?

Findings:
The evaluation found the following:

• The results of the quasi-experimental evaluation study demonstrate that the NCC treatment of public land was effective in reducing the FRCC of the treated land compared to the untreated comparison sites, thereby reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire. 
• The effect size of the treatment intervention was found to be large, with a partial eta squared value of .287. This large effect size will permit a smaller number of treatment and comparison sites to be sampled in future grant cycles and still test for significant differences between the treatment and comparison sites. 
• The results of the evaluation study provide evidence of the success of NCC’s efforts. The evaluator concluded that NCC’s fuel reduction program activities are effective methods to achieve the program goals.

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