Advancing Meadow Restoration in the North Yuba Landscape 

written by Rose Ledford, SYRCL’s Science and Education Project Manager

Last year, SYRCL received grant funding from the Sierra Meadows Partnership Block Grant to advance meadow restoration within the North Yuba Landscape Resiliency Project footprint. The goal of this project is to assess every meadow in the North Yuba so that we can prioritize sites for restoration. This project will set SYRCL and partners up to make informed decisions about where our work is needed most, and where it can have the biggest impact.  

When meadows become degraded, they lose the outsized ecological benefits of a healthy meadow. Water that should be stored for late summer flows rushes out of the system. Degradation decreases its ability to filter sediments, recharge groundwater, provide a firebreak in the event of a catastrophic wildfire, and provide habitat for wetland species. A degraded meadow can even become a carbon source, as opposed to a healthy meadow, which sequesters carbon. 

In 2017, the University of California Davis (UCD) published a massive dataset of all known meadows across the Sierra Nevada region. This data set was paired with a predictive dataset, Lost Meadow Model, produced by the USFS Pacific southwest Research Station. A lost meadow is a site that has become so degraded that dry upland conifers are able to establish on it and then encroach into the dry meadow floodplain. These conditions leave meadows in a nearly unrecognizable state. The Lost Meadow Model used machine learning to identify sites that share the same climactic, hydrologic, and topographic conditions as known meadows in the UCD dataset. The model frequently predicted lost meadows extending from the known meadows, indicating that the extent of many meadows across the Sierra were once much larger. Human impacts have resulted in degraded meadows that are disappearing before our eyes. The Lost Meadows Model helps us to see that.    

This past spring, SYRCL worked with staff from American Rivers (AR) and the Tahoe National Forest (TNF) to create a protocol for assessing these predicted lost meadow sites. This protocol evaluated the on the ground conditions, taking into consideration the hydrology, water availability, plant communities, extent of conifer encroachment, and when necessary, soil composition and structure of these sites.   

Field Season Summary:  

During the 2025 field season, we focused on evaluating the condition of know meadows using the American Rivers Meadow Condition Scorecard. When these sites contained lost meadow extensions or had nearby lost meadows, we utilized the newly developed lost meadow protocol to validate the lost meadow predictions.  

This summer, staff from SYRCL, AR, and TNF evaluated nearly every known meadow, and their lost meadow extensions, in the North Yuba — more than 3,750 acres of meadow habitat!  

How was that possible?  

Throughout the summer our field crews spent more than 22 nights camping in the North Yuba to reduce commute time. This allowed for more time to be spent doing meadow assessment. Field crews tracked many miles, hiking in rainboots and incurring several nasty blisters. Hundreds of footsteps were taken bushwacking through alder thickets. Countless moments of awe and inspiration in our beautiful landscape were paired with equally as many moments of frustration about the degraded condition in many of these meadows.  

It was all worth it, though. These long days have yielded a massive dataset, giving us information about nearly every meadow in the North Yuba.  

This winter we will be working to enter that data into our systems so that we can begin to look at the condition of meadows across the landscape. This data will allow us to prioritize sites for restoration for years to come.  

Healthy meadows act as natural reservoirs that give rain, snow, and runoff the chance to slow down, spread out, and sink into the soil, filtering and storing water. These mountain meadows function like high-elevation floodplains and green sponges, holding cold water during spring snowmelt and releasing it gradually during the drier summer months when downstream communities need water most. The shallow groundwater supports lush plant communities and willow thickets—habitat of choice for countless wildlife and plant species in the Sierra Nevada. Beyond water storage, healthy meadows provide multiple benefits: they reduce peak flood flows, improve water quality through natural filtration, sequester significant amounts of carbon, create natural firebreaks that slow wildfire spread, and serve as biodiversity hotspots for birds, fish, amphibians, and native plants. Though meadows cover only two percent of the Sierra Nevada landscape, they are critical to the health and resilience of the region’s rivers and the 75 percent of Californians who depend on Sierra water sources. 

We still have a lot of work to do. Looking at this dataset has our meadows team deeply excited about the future of our work and maybe, just maybe, a teensy bit overwhelmed by the possibilities. Next summer our field crew will focus on assessing all the isolated lost meadow predictions that we haven’t visited yet.  

As we move into the next phase of this project, the work ahead is substantial, but also full of opportunity. With a clearer understanding of meadow conditions across the North Yuba, SYRCL and our partners are now better equipped to make strategic, science-based decisions about where restoration will have the greatest impact.

This kind of long-term stewardship takes sustained support. If you value this type of on-the-ground science and careful planning for the future of the Yuba watershed, we invite you to support SYRCL as a donor or member. Your contribution helps ensure that this work continues and that these vital meadow ecosystems get the attention they need in the years ahead. 

Stay tuned to see what we discover when we combine technological predictive modeling, an interdisciplinary team, and boots on the ground field work.