Reporting Lessons Learned from the Northwest Forest Plans Experiences

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ReportingLessons Learned from the Northwest
Forest Plans Experiences

• Craig Palmer
• Mojave Network Data Manager
• University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Annual IM Meeting, Austin TX, Feb. 10, 2005
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Overview

• Background on Northwest Forest Plan
• Reporting strategy
• Lessons learned
• Recommendations

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Timeline
Plan
1994
95
97
98
99
2000
01
02
03
04
05
2006
96






Prepare monitoring plans
Hire staff




Prepare annual reports

Prepare 10-year interpretive report
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Northwest Forest Plan

• 1993 at direction of President Clinton
• Resolve conflict over timber management and
  protection of natural resources (e.g. spotted
  owl)
• 10 million hectares (24 million acres)
• Federal Government land management units (USFS,
  BLM, NPS)
• 100 year plan

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• Monitoring is a requirement

Monitoring is central to the Northwest Forest
Plans validity. If it is not funded, or done
for any reason, the plan will have to be
reconsidered. William L. Dwyer Judge, US
District Court December 1994
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Review of other monitoring programs

• Broad spatial scale
• Ecological focus
• Multiple resource issues
• Long-term
• Contributing to ongoing management decision-making

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Primary reasons for failure of monitoring programs

• No link to decision-making
• Poor basis for selection of measurements
  (indicators)
• Little ecological or scientific foundation
• Lack of emphasis on data quality and accessibility

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Approaches Recommended for Monitoring

• Linkage to decision-making
• Adaptive management
• Prospective monitoring
• Reporting
• Indicator selection
• Seven step process
• Ecological foundation
• Conceptual model for habitat monitoring
• Data quality and accessibility
• Structured quality assurance program
• Identification of essential data from external
  programs

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Approach to Reporting

• Adaptive management cycle
• Conceptual model for reporting
• Role of annual and interpretive reports

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Adaptive Management Cycle
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Annual summary reports
Periodic interpretive reports
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Lessons Learned

• Value of annual reports
• Effort required for interpretive reports
• Data management issues

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Benefits of Annual Reports

• Motivate staff to process data
• Tangible products for accountability
• Building blocks for interpretive reports
• Builds client base

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10- Year Interpretive Report
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Synthesis report topics

• What was expected?
• What actually occurred?
• How different are they?
• Were these differences caused by the Plan?
• How certain are you?
• Are the assumptions (premises) of the Plan still
  valid?

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Data Management Issues
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Data Types
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Roads
Missing roads
BLM and FS GIS layers are missing 10 15 of the
total roads.
Non-federal GIS layers are missing 37 of the
total roads.
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Ranking of issues
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Ranking of Issues

• Level Impact Value
• Very High Could not complete section in report 4
• High Section completed with limitations 3
• Moderate Delayed completion of section of
  report 2
• Low Section completed on time - but with
  significant effort 1
• None No impact to this module's report 0

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Top ranking issues
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Streams

• Issue- inconsistent identification of streams
  (intermittent)
• Impact- most module reports impacted
• Vision- interagency regional hydrography data
  layers collected in a consistent manner

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Land Use Allocation Map

• Updated land use allocation map
• Issue- does not include riparian reserves
• Impact- most module reports impacted
• e.g. dispersal habitat for owls, evaluation of
  watershed health
• Vision- LUA coverage that includes riparian
  reserves

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Activities

• Restoration, harvests, thinning etc.
• Issue spatial data not collected for activities
• Impact most module reports impacted, required
  work-arounds
• Vision regional activities database with
  spatial information

? Change Detection Remote Sensing data Remeasured
plots
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Vegetation Mapping

• Used remotely sensed maps, plot data sets, data
  analysis tools, created habitat maps (northern
  spotted owls, marbled murrelets)
• Issue- difference between CA (polygons) and WA/OR
  (pixels)
• Impact-most module
• reports
• Vision- single approach
• to vegetation mapping

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Recommendations to the IM Program related to
Reporting

• Consider the role of reporting in the adaptive
  management cycle
• Encourage annual reports
• Provides many benefits
• Consider the importance of periodic interpretive
  reports
• Will require outside help and involvement
• Begin now to identify your external data needs
• Begin now to address data management obstacles