The Unknown Trajectory of Forest Restoration: A Call for Ecosystem Monitoring

est environment (Noss et al. 2006). In the absence of an effective ecosystem monitoring program, there is a limited ability to assess the influence of restoration efforts on ecosystem integrity and sustainability and there is little or no basis for improving these activities. Several conditions indicate that monitoring of restoration may be especially beneficial: (1) restoration is a process rather than an event; thus, the initial treatments are only the first step in the restoration process; (2) restoration is a new science, therefore, data on the efficacy of such treatments are necessary if we are going to improve confidence in management projections; (3) an increasing number of federal forest plans are being predicated on the application of adaptive management strategies that specifically require monitoring of outcomes to allow for evaluation and reconsideration of design; and (4) unintended negative effects created by restoration activities could be mitigated before they become long-term problems applied broadly across the landscape. Each of these situations argues for increased posttreatment monitoring. The advent of adaptive management makes monitoring especially relevant. Adaptive management is an iterative approach to management that is based on a series of feedback mechanisms in a continual cycle of evaluation, planning, action, and monitoring (Shindler et al. 1999). Under adaptive management, learning is accelerated because management is conducted in a framework of experimentation, where cause–effect relationships between management actions and outcomes are treated as hypotheses to be tested. Each element of this process is fundamental to the success of the approach, and exclusion of any one element, including monitoring, scuttles the entire process and prevents learning. Ecological restoration holds great potential for improving the condition of the land, but, as a relatively new field in the arena of natural resource management, it would benefit from accelerated development. Adaptive management can help speed learning by combining management and experimentation through the practice of monitoring. Although systematic ecosystem monitoring is extremely rare, it must be noted that there are several examples where postrestoration treatment monitoring has been conducted or where intensive monitoring is planned for upcoming restoration efforts. These exceptions serve as excellent models for future monitoring efforts. In the southwestern United States, the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program (a combined effort of the Ecological Restoration Institute, several nongovernment organizations, and the US Forest Service) has made great strides in the area of forest restoration and has published an excellent series on restoration and monitoring (US Forest Service 2003a) based in part on a series of workshops (US Forest Service 2003). The purpose of this article is to emphasize the need for ecological monitoring after forest restoration activities and propose possible approaches that may be used even when funding is limited for such activities. The following briefly describes the lack of monitoring on federal restoration forestry projects, elaborates on the need for an effective monitoring program to evaluate success and failure as forest restoration management evolves, and provides three possible approaches to a successful monitoring program. Although ecosystem monitoring is essential to any program of adaptive management, we focus here on the common practice of fuel treatment in dry, fire-prone western forests, particularly on opportunities for project-level monitoring to enhance understanding of treatment effects on biophysical site properties. Assessment of broad-scale ecological impacts and of socioeconomic impacts at all scales are also important to understanding restoration effects but are beyond the scope of this article. Fire History and Forest Restoration in the Western United States Low-elevation ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), mixed ponderosa pine/Douglasfir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), and western larch (Larix occidentalis)/Douglas-fir ecosystems historically experienced a relatively frequent, low-severity or mixed-severity fire regime that promoted dominance of large-diameter ponderosa pine and western larch (Agee 1993, Arno and Fiedler 2005, Baker et al. 2006, Crist et al. 2008, Hessburg et al.

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