Given the topic for this newsletter, we felt that a review of a newly proposed ecological monitoring program might be of interest to the readers. For several years, interagency Federal teams have been working together to develop a strategy for evaluating the success of the Northwest Forest Plan. An overall strategy has recently been approved under the title "Effectiveness Monitoring for the Northwest Forest Plan" and will soon be available as a General Technical Report from the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station.
The Northwest Forest Plan (Forest Plan) is a large-scale ecosystem management plan for Federal lands in the Pacific Northwest, encompassing twenty-four million acres of federally-managed forests over eighteen National Forests and seven Bureau of Land Management Districts in northern California, western Oregon, and western Washington. Three types of monitoring are mandated by the Forest Plan: implementation, effectiveness, and validation. The purpose of our effort has been to provide the strategy and design for effectiveness monitoring of priority resources identified in the Forest Plan. In the context of the Forest Plan, the primary question effectiveness monitoring is designed to answer is "To what extent are the goals and objectives of the Forest Plan being achieved?"
The general approach for developing the effectiveness monitoring program has been to develop an overall scientific framework for monitoring. This approach was then used in the development of monitoring strategies for specific priority resources identified by management including late successional and old-growth forests, northern spotted owls, marbled murrelets and aquatic and riparian resources. This approach will also provide the basis for designing future monitoring modules that may address other important resource areas (for example, socioeconomic, tribal, special emphasis (survey-and-manage) species or other species associated with late-successional or aquatic ecosystems).
The development of a scientific framework for effectiveness monitoring has presented many challenges. The task of developing a monitoring system to detect and recognize meaningful change is complex because natural systems are inherently dynamic and spatially heterogeneous. Further, many changes that occur in space and time are not a consequence of human-induced impacts, and many are not amenable to management intervention.
The emphasis we chose for effectiveness monitoring of the Forest Plan may best be described as prospective monitoring. This approach incorporates causal relationships between effects and stressors through the judicious selection of indicators. It starts with a characterization of threats (stressors) to the ecological integrity and ecosystem functioning (effects) of the management unit. A conceptual model then outlines the pathways from the stressor(s) to the ecological effects. Attributes that are indicative of the anticipated changes in specific ecological conditions are then selected for measurement. The ultimate success of this approach depends on the validity of the assumed cause-effect relationships between the stressor(s), their ecological effects, and the selected indicators of stress.
The seven steps that we followed in developing the approach to the effectiveness monitoring program for the Forest Plan were:
Specify goals and objectives
Characterize stressors and disturbances
Develop conceptual modelsoutlining the pathways from stressors to the ecological effects on one or more resources
Select indicatorsdetects stressors acting on resources
Determine detection limits for indicatorsto guide sampling design
Establish "trigger points" for management intervention
Establish clear connections to the management decision making process
The foundation of our approach to effectiveness monitoring for the Forest Plan is to initiate a gradual transition from an intensive, individual species-resource focus to a more extensive, ecosystems approach. This transition assumes identifying and measuring surrogate variables that allow reliable inferences about the integrity of the primary resources. Such a fundamental shift means a movement away from the current crisis response to individual endangered species-resource issues, to a prospective evaluation of management decisions in an ecosystem context. The transition to a habitat-based monitoring program has several advantages:
Monitoring vegetation change will be more cost effective than directly monitoring populations of all the possible species for which agencies are responsible;
Existing forest inventory programs can be the foundation for monitoring programs.
A habitat focus is more in line with the mandates of the Forest Plan to manage vegetation communities (habitat), not species populations directly; and
Estimating the trends in habitat structure and composition represents an anticipatory as opposed to a retrospective approach to ecological monitoring, and allows evaluating alternative management strategies.
The justification for using habitat structure as surrogate variables for predicting wildlife populations is based on both pragmatic and theoretical arguments. Habitat loss and fragmentation were the primary drivers or stressors behind creation of the Forest Plan. The theoretical argument is based on the belief that animals respond to habitat in an adaptive fashion. That is, where an animal selects to live is believed to be an evolved behavioral response stimulated by structural and compositional features of the landscape. Predictive habitat suitability models will need to consider the relations between landscape pattern and life history characteristics of individual species and population-level dynamics to provide a realistic portrayal of potential trends. The assessment strategy, which emphasizes both remotely sensed and ground plot habitat data, should allow inferences to habitat quality at different spatial scales across a range of resource issues.
To be successful, a monitoring program must be able to collect data, summarize the data into useful information, and interpret that information to advance understanding and knowledge for improved management decision making. Key components of a structured monitoring program include data collection, preparation of data summaries and interpretive reports, feedback to management, and program coordination and support. Underlying the program is an information management and quality assurance system that will be needed to assist in collecting, validating, storing, and retrieving data and in preparing reports.
Two types of reports are planned for the effectiveness monitoring programdata summaries and interpretive reports. Data summaries are brief, comprehensive reports of essential data collected for effectiveness monitoring, and would be produced annually for each resource being monitored. Region-wide interpretive reports will be produced on five-year intervals. The purpose of interpretive reports is to evaluate the ecological significance of status and trends emerging in the monitoring data in relation to the Forest Plan, and to provide statements of the implications of monitoring results. The resulting information is critical to adaptive management; it can be used to change plans, direction, or policies and contribute to budgetary and other decisions.
Many inventory, monitoring, and research projects are currently collecting data of value to effectiveness monitoring in the region of the Forest Plan. Rather than duplicate these efforts, we are recommending to build as much as possible on these ongoing data collection activities. Several critical support functions will be important to the long-term success of this program. Research is a necessary companion component to monitoring in order to continually improve methods for collecting, evaluating and reporting ecological information. Information management and quality assurance systems must be established to ensure rapid access to data that has been quality assured.
A number of monitoring workgroups have used this strategy to develop specific monitoring plans for key ecological resources that were assigned by the Federal agencies, including late-successional and old-growth forests, northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet, and aquatic and riparian resources. Other monitoring plans will be developed in the future. Our goal is to move to implement these strategies beginning in 1998.
Given the complexity of a monitoring program of this scale, magnitude, and importance, we are proposing that the initial goal be development of the first region-wide interpretive monitoring report at the end of 1999. Not only will this be a test of the success of the program, it will also provide the baseline for assessing future trends, and will provide an opportunity to adjust the program for future operation. This task is daunting, given the diversity of cooperating agencies, resources being monitored, and plethora of different monitoring groups. Because much of the monitoring program is based on continuing current data gathering activities, the program can easily be implemented. However, major consideration will need to be given to establishing a permanent monitoring staff and providing stable funding.
If the approaches to staffing, data sharing, and quality assurance are followed, integrating all the monitoring efforts is likely and the information necessary for adaptive management of the Forest Plan will be available.
