As Congress reserved virtually all national forest land in California to maintain timber supplies and water flows, this meant that water for other national forest activities was to be allocated under state law among competitive claims for its use. Thus, the state has emerging powers to influence how the Forest Service harvests timber, how it uses water that runs through national forest lands, and perhaps how it releases water that it can control . See State Water Resources Control Board v. U.S. . Scientists have developed methods of timber harvesting specifically to produce and store more water for down stream benefit. These methods can increase local water runoff by as much as 20 percent and can delay its release for several weeks.
Timber harvesting is now policially incorrect.
The most likely areas in the Sierra Nevada that would benefit from these techniques are the mixed-conifer, fir and pine forest types. Which, incidentally, are the areas with the most severe vegetative build up and consequentially the areas most prone to catastrophic fire.