US Forest Service Research and Development Multiple-resource Monitoring to Guide Adaptive Management - Rocky Mountain Research Station - RMRS - US Forest Service
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  • 240 West Prospect
  • Fort Collins, CO 80526
  • (970) 498-1100
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Multiple-resource Monitoring to Guide Adaptive Management

National Forest System lands are threatened by many factors, epitomized by the Chief's Four Threats. The Forest Service meets these threats with active management. However, active management entails responsibilities to demonstrate effectiveness of the activity, mitigate undesired effects, and continually improve management practices. Meeting these responsibilities requires effective monitoring and adaptive management. Requirements for monitoring are established in many laws and regulations, including the Data Quality Act and the1982 and 2005 regulations implementing the National Forest Management Act. Unfortunately, we have been successfully challenged in court due to the absence of comprehensive and defensible monitoring programs.

Several major scientific advances have provided the means to improve resource monitoring programs. In close collaboration with scientists in RMRS 4201, FIA, USFS Northern Region and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, we have developed a rigorous multi-resource monitoring program. The program has three key characteristics that provide valuable advances over previously available monitoring efforts:

  • It is based on broad-scale, representative sampling of multiple resources using standardized protocols.
  • Uses molecular genetics to obtain cost-effective population estimates for species of concern, and predict effects of management on population connectivity.
  • Develops habitat relationships models to predict effects of management on species distributions and populations, with habitat mapping to predict cumulative effects of management and natural disturbance across broad scales.
These advances enable rigorous and cost-effective monitoring of multiple resources across broad geographical areas. They enable us to more efficiently track how resources are changing with respect to Desired Conditions, including the maintenance of valued ecosystem services such as biological diversity. They also improve our ability to determine the causes of changes in resource conditions over time, and provide spatially explicit predictions of future conditions as part of an ongoing adaptive management process. Together, they provide a standardized and flexible framework to address information needs that change over time without loss of continuity and generate data that contribute to a greater understanding of the systems we manage. Monitoring designed and implemented based on these improved designs and techniques would be robust in court, as they use rigorous statistical methods to make inferences from large and representative samples.

References

For more information please refer to the following papers:

Cushman, S.A, K.S. McKelvey, J. Hayden and M.K. Schwartz. 2006. Gene-flow in complex landscapes: testing multiple hypotheses with causal modeling. American Naturalist In press.

Cushman, S.A., D. McKenzie, J. Littell, K.S. McKelvey, and D.L. Peterson. In Review. Research agenda for integrated landscape modeling. USDA-FS GTR-RMxxxx.

Cushman, S.A. 2006. Effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on amphibians: a review and prospectus. Biological Conservation 128:231-240.

Rocky Mountain Research Station
Last Modified: Monday, 28 April 2008 at 17:16:14 EDT (Version 1.0.5)