Adaptive Management Services

Projects

LTBMU Fuels Monitoring Pilot

» Project Overview

Maximizing the effectiveness of fuels treatments by the LTBMU requires monitoring. Monitoring is necessary to evaluate whether management objectives are being met or not, to provide data necessary to facilitate adaptive management, to limit possible legal actions against the agency, to provide a scientific basis for making ecological decisions and economic decisions.

The monitoring design utilized by AMSET to establish plots in summer 2006 was designed according to the FIREMON program, a system specifically designed for gathering, storing, and analyzing ecological change resulting from fuel treatments and wildfire. This program has been developed as an interagency effort to standardize fuels treatment and fire effects monitoring, and is designed to capture ecosystem response at multiple spatial and time scales. Prior to initiation of the monitoring work, AMSET coordinated with BMP Ecosciences, a contractor hired by the PSW Research Station to collect data for the Uplands Fuels Monitoring Project Study. Both teams worked together to design compatible sampling protocols derived from FIREMON guidelines. Data collected under these two separate programs should therefore be useful for analysis between and among each other.

Figure 1: Photo taken at one of the LTBMU Fuels Monitoring Pilot plots

Figure 2: Plot Layout Diagram, LTBMU Fuels Treatment Monitoring

Figure 3: Cover/Frequency Measures Layout, also the location of Chipped/Mast Fuels Measures