New Report:

Key Findings from the SWCC Monitoring Program 2010-2020

2021 Adaptive Management Monitoring Presentations

June 10, 1-4pm: Adaptive Management Forum (Agenda). We’ll provide a forum for discussing the results of the Southwestern Crown Collaborative (SWCC) monitoring program. During the Forum project leads will provide a very brief 2-4 min overview and then answer any questions people may have.

Please watch the below pre-recorded presentations. Click on the project name to view the video recording. Recordings include captions and PDF files of the slides are also available.

Aquatics:

Socioeconomics:

Wildlife:

Vegetation:

Monitoring

Monitoring Groups

Reports and Plans

 
 
Monitoring vegetation along restored roads.

Monitoring vegetation along restored roads.

About the SWCC Monitoring Program

The SWCC identifies a strong monitoring program as a vital component to the success of the collaborative process and developed several goals for monitoring including:

  • Determining the effects of fuels and forest restoration efforts conducted under the CFLRP;

  • Validating or improving management approaches to achieve treatment objectives (i.e. through adaptive management);

  • Determining how the interaction of various forest treatments can generate landscape level effects that move the Southwestern Crown landscape toward a more resilient, high integrity ecosystem;

  • Using a multi-party approach to monitoring, including the use of citizen science and education efforts;

  • Setting a national example for monitoring the effects of forest management activities; and

  • Complying with FLRA.

The SWCC Monitoring Committee (Meeting Notes) was established by the SWCC Collaborative and is an open, voluntary group, comprised of experts in a range of subjects. Its members include agency personnel, university faculty, industry and NGO staff, and community members. The Monitoring Committee makes recommendations to the Collaborative on potential monitoring actions which may then be forwarded to the appropriate Forest Supervisor. The Monitoring Committee is subdivided into four working groups to better align their operations to the major goal areas within the CFLRP proposal and to allow more practical allocation of operational responsibilities for designing and conducting monitoring activities.

The Forest Landscape Restoration Act specifically requires a multi-party monitoring program for each CFLRP project. The benefits of a multi-party approach are: 

  1. Leveraging the expertise and capacity of resources outside the Forest Service

  2. Providing an unbiased evaluation of forest restoration treatments

  3. Providing educational experiences on forest restoration for local citizens

The SWCC proposal also recognizes the significance of public learning via involvement in monitoring activities, such that throughout the monitoring process efforts will be made to engage students and local residents in “citizen science” opportunities.

Adaptive Management
The results of the monitoring program will be used within an adaptive management framework to inform the planning and implementation of future management activities. However, monitoring results can also be used to revise goals and objectives, to adjust conceptual models and predictions about the systems in which management actions occur, or even to reassess the way in which a problem is framed. An annual two-day Adaptive Management Workshop is held at UM’s Lubrecht Experimental Forest to discuss monitoring results with land managers and resource specialists within the Forest Service. Summary reports and presentations from these workshops are available here: Adaptive Management Workshops.

Lynx at bait station.

Lynx at bait station.

Wildlife Monitoring

One of the goals of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act is to "improve fish and wildlife habitat, including for endangered, threatened, and sensitive species". The SWCC Wildlife Working Group has placed most of their effort on monitoring mid-sized carnivores some of which are listed under the Endangered Species Act or are proposed for listing. Because of the wide-ranging nature of forest carnivores, it is difficult to determine the effects that small-scale treatments may have on forest carnivores. However, forest carnivores could benefit from the efforts to effect landscape-scale changes, including restoring a natural balance of habitat conditions and disturbances, reducing roads, and restoring habitat for prey species.

Carnivore Monitoring Workshop Materials from April 2016 and December 2015 workshops (See Resources page)

NPR Story on Carnivore Monitoring project (May 2019).

GRAIP sediment trap (T. Black)

GRAIP sediment trap (T. Black)

Aquatics Monitoring

Several of the goals of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act pertain to aquatic habitats, including:

  • Improve fish and wildlife habitat, including for endangered, threatened, and sensitive species;

  • Maintain or improve water quality and watershed function;

  • Prevent, remediate, or control invasions of exotic species; and

  • Maintain, decommission, and rehabilitate roads and trails.

Restoration treatments aimed at one or more of these goals will influence riparian habitats and their inhabitants. The SWCC Aquatics Monitoring Working Group has focused on two aquatics components: 1) sensitive fish species and 2) sediment delivery from roads to streams.

 

Current Aquatics monitoring projects:

Publication: Linkages between unpaved forest roads and streambed sediment: why context matters in directing road restoration. 2016. Al-Chokhachy, R., T.A. Black, C. Thomas, C.H. Luce, B. Rieman, R. Cissel, A. Carlson, S. Hendrickson, E.K. Archer, J.L. Kershner. Restoration Ecology 24(5):589-598.
Bull trout (R. Al-Chokhachy)

Bull trout (R. Al-Chokhachy)

Vegetation Monitoring

Fuels reduction and fire regime restoration are two of the primary goals of both the Forest Landscape Restoration Act (FLRA) and the Southwestern Crown Collaborative (SWCC). The SWCC proposal identifies the goal "within the WUI [Wildland-Urban Interface], reduce the risk of wildfire by removing fuels, especially small-diameter trees, while maintaining forest structure to protect ecosystem components”. The SWCC is also trying to restore forest processes that are currently under-represented in the landscape, compared to historical conditions, including low and mixed-severity fire regimes. Maintaining and promoting the growth of the large tree component, which is also under-represented, across the landscape is another focus. Finally, controlling and eradicating weeds is emphasized. The Vegetation Working Group is using multiple projects to answer questions about the effectiveness of these treatments at multiple scales. Current Monitoring Projects:

Social and Economic Monitoring

Collaborative, landscape-scale forest management is a relatively new paradigm for the Forest Service and their stakeholders. Therefore, our social monitoring focuses on tracking the attitudes towards management activities conducted under the CFLR program and towards the collaborative process.

Two of the expected benefits of accelerated forest restoration under CFLRP are local job creation and a reduction in wildfire management costs. Therefore, economic monitoring focuses on tracking job creation, impacts on local businesses, contract attributes, and treatment costs and benefits.

Current monitoring projects:

Citizen Science

What do we mean by “citizen science”? Citizen Science efforts are those projects that use trained volunteers and scientists together to answer local questions, inform natural resource decisions, advance scientific understanding, or improve environmental education. More generally, citizen science includes efforts to educate local community members about issues through outreach and field-based events. They may be one-time events or include repeated monitoring over time.

Why should we do citizen science? The Forest Landscape Restoration Act specifically requires a multi-party monitoring program for each CFLRP project. The benefits of a multi-party approach are to 1) leverage the expertise and capacity of resources outside the Forest Service, 2) provide an unbiased evaluation of forest restoration treatments, and 3) to provide educational experiences on forest restoration for local citizens. The SWCC Monitoring Committee has identified public learning about natural resource management as a parallel goal to understanding treatment effectiveness throughout the monitoring program.

Highlighted Projects:

 

 

Rapid Forest Assessment

We developed a Rapid Forest Assessment (RFA) approach for monitoring key characteristics of conifer-dominated forests. We have permanently installed vegetation plots in several management locations in the SW Crown. Plot locations were chosen randomly using a GIS program and are re-measured annually by local elementary, middle, and high school students.

We chose our variables and methods to maximize field efficiency while maintaining ease of analysis and understanding. We reduced the number of variables that need to be precisely measured by “binning” or categorizing responses into a few classes. Variables measured include trees, fuels, woody debris, ground cover, horizontal cover, wildlife pellets, weeds, and soil disturbance. This work is complemented by a curriculum that provides a “real world” science experience for students and other citizen scientists to explore a range of topics in their local ecosystems. 

The project allows students to get hands-on experience in: collecting data in the field, entering the data and checking its quality, analyzing the data through graphs and summaries, and interpreting the data to draw meaningful conclusions. Students learn about forest succession, other ecosystem processes (fire, insect-caused tree mortality), and forest management. The data generated can help communities, and students, track changes in their forests through time and provides a connection to the ecosystems in which they live. It can emphasize the sensitivity of these systems to changes in climate and management.

Montana Conservation Crew helping with the Rapid Forest Assessment in the Swan Valley.

Montana Conservation Crew helping with the Rapid Forest Assessment in the Swan Valley.

Debbie Anderson of the Montana Discovery Foundation gives an introduction during a field day with SWCC partners and high school students from Lincoln.

Debbie Anderson of the Montana Discovery Foundation gives an introduction during a field day with SWCC partners and high school students from Lincoln.

 

Publication: A Rapid Forest Assessment for Multiparty Monitoring Across Landscapes. 2015. Davis, C.R., R.T. Belote, M.A. Williamson, A.J. Larson, and B.E. Esch. Journal of Forestry 114(2):125-133.

 
Example of graph produced by students after data collection.

Example of graph produced by students after data collection.

 

Stream Monitoring

Changing climate conditions can have direct and immediate effects on streams. The amount and timing of flows, water temperature, and associated water quality variables can be particularly vulnerable to change in mountain snowmelt streams. Communities in the Southwestern Crown of the Continent depend on such streams and the lakes they feed for natural, recreational, economic, and aesthetic values key to community vitality, sense of place, and way of life.  Yet there is limited information available to those communities on the amount and quality of the water and of any trends in water supply.  We have developed a network of citizen science stream monitoring sites in and around three of the largest communities in the Southwestern Crown. Our goals are to engage people in assessing natural resources in their communities; collect long term data that can be useful in making decisions about water use, fisheries management, and land use and restoration; and promote awareness of the potential impacts of climate change in the region.

Students and teachers work with community members to collect intensive, high quality data on streamflow, temperature, and turbidity in important streams in their area. Associated curriculum helps students understand why and how to collect data and how to analyze them to make sense of the information. Community volunteers also collected nutrient and turbidity data on additional streams. 

Participants collect and analyze intensive, high quality data on streamflow, temperature, and turbidity in important streams in their communities.  We work with participants to:

  1. Install a permanent stream gauge and a stilling well with data loggers to record water depth and temperature continuously;
  2. Collect water samples and measure turbidity at different flow levels;
  3. Measure actual flow 8-10 times per year;
  4. Create a rating curve to predict flow at all depths, and
  5. Create a hydrograph of streamflow throughout the year.
Training teachers to measure stream flow.

Training teachers to measure stream flow.