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Monitoring

Coordinated Schedule Information

The intent of the coordinated schedule is to plan the efficient acquisition of resource photography, satellite imagery and the updating of vegetation resource information for monitoring forest and rangelands of the National Forests of the Pacific Southwest Region. Existing vegetation mapping, ground based inventory sampling, and landscape change activity tracking programs are the key components of the current monitoring effort. Physiographic and administrative provinces, National Forests acreage, the current status of vegetation maps, and the progress of the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) inventories are major considerations in development of the current coordinated schedule for the Pacific Southwest Region.

This schedule covers approximately 21 million acres of National Forest System lands within the Pacific Southwest Region. For the past 15 years, a 5-year cycle consisting of five areas of approximately 4 million acres each, were identified as project areas for organizing mapping and monitoring work. Due to reductions in budgets and changes in the FIA programs from periodic to annual, a 10-year schedule is now being considered, consisting of and average of 2.1 million acres each year.

A requirement of the monitoring program is the availability of existing vegetation maps and FIA inventory plots to a common standard across all National Forests. This is accomplished by following National mapping and inventory standards on all projects. Work accomplished within a physiographic province should have information sources from a narrow range of dates, as much as possible, to facilitate analysis efforts, while balancing yearly workloads and budget constraints. Yearly budgets need to be stable, if scheduled activities are to stay on cycle. All programs can only realize major cost savings, where current photos and imagery can be substituted for ground based visits through interpretation and classification.

Each year one to three adjacent National Forests are identified for acquiring aerial photography and imagery. Vegetation map updates are scheduled the following year for these same Forests. Activity information (wildfire, harvest and fuel treatments, and pest mortality) as well as change detection are used to target updates for change in the existing vegetation maps. Forest inventory re-measurements are ongoing each year at 10 percent, one panel each year across all lands. However, specific plots may need to be scheduled for re-measurement where changes have occurred from fire, harvest or other major landscape changes since the last measurement date. The subsequent year, inventory compilation and analysis are planned using the latest maps and inventory information.

Large scale monitoring success is dependent on consistent baseline information for assessing current condition and changes over time for wildlife habitats, late succession old growth forests, forest health, tree mortality and growth, and standing forest volumes. This information is required as inputs to Resource Planning Act assessments, National Forest Resource Management Planning revisions, and the Northwest Forest Plan, Sierra Nevada Framework and Southern California National Forests monitoring plans, as well as more localized watershed and county planning efforts. By establishing a systematic update cycle for mapping and inventory, opportunities for partnerships outside of the National Forests become more available.

Currently a 1990 MOU exists between the Forest Service and California Department of Forestry (CDF) for jointly mapping and assessing the vegetation resources of California. The Lassen and Modoc Plateau was the first area mapped under this agreement. Subsequently baseline vegetation maps were completed for the Northern and Central Sierra Nevada Provinces. A cooperative effort with Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), California Department of Fish and Game, and the Forest Service completed the Klamath Province vegetation baseline for monitoring of the Northwest Forest Plan. A similar mapping effort was funded through a CALFED grant for headwaters of the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds. Additional funding from CDF and FWS for the South coast of California made the latest mapping update effort possible. To date, 63 million acres have been mapped to a common standard. Because of the success of this ongoing effort, an MOU with other federal and state agencies has been developed with the goal to establish a common baseline vegetation map throughout California. Other related cooperative projects have also been developed with the FS and CDF for mapping surface fuels and fire history, conducting remote sensing based change detection, and map updating in California under a coordinated cycle.

Another major effort in vegetation monitoring is the annual FIA inventory program, conducted by the Pacific Northwest Research Station, on both private and federal lands in California. Forest health monitoring efforts directly benefit from the network of permanent plots across all ownerships. Special studies are enabled through coordination of mapping and linkages to FIA inventory plots and their re-measurement. Since 1/10 of all FIA plots are re-measured each year, at least 1/2 of the plots are less than 5 years old, allowing assessment of current conditions of all forested lands across ownerships. For landscape changes, FIA plots may be re-measured off cycle, thus assuring all significantly changed plots are re-measured for a study area. Under the FIA annual cycle, a ready supply of non-changed plots are also re-measured to assess background changes in mortality, growth or other detailed vegetation attributes that cannot be directly tied to a recent change activity. The non-changed re-measured plots can also be used for calibrating growth projections on older plot information. All plots are scheduled for re-measurement within 10 years of their establishment as the cycle progresses over the same geographic area.

In California, implementation of the Annual FIA inventory protocols began in 2001. A State Inventory Report is currently being developed using 5 panels measured from 2001 to 2005. An additional 3 panels are available on National Forest Lands and will be used in the assessment.

USDA Forest Service - Pacific Southwest Region
Last Modified: Wednesday, 03 March 2010 at 10:43:20 EST