Priority 4: Science to Monitor and Predict Land Stewardship and Disturbance Impacts

Monitoring provides the basis to gauge and react to change, whether human-caused or natural. The science of monitoring uses innovative technologies and techniques to offer a view before, during, and after changes in landscape conditions and ecosystem processes. Because the PNW Research Station continues long-term studies and monitoring that in some cases began in the early 1900s, we can quantify basic processes such as vegetation growth rates for the past 100 years and effects of competition as well as successional dynamics following disturbances. Our long-term data, for example, enable us to validate changes associated with climate change from other potential drivers.

This research priority encompasses the Pacific Northwest-Forest Inventory and Analysis (PNW-FIA) program, which is responsible for conducting forest inventories on about 570 million acres (230 million hectares) of public and private land. The PNW-FIA program produces annual inventories as well as periodic assessments of the status and trends of forests that are used by state and federal land managers, nongovernmental organizations, financial investors, tribes and native corporations, and private landowners.

We also monitor plant and animal populations in both terrestrial and aquatic systems; examine subsurface processes and carbon fluxes; and examine and predict responses to climate, disturbance, environmental toxins, insects and pathogens, and management actions and policies.

Outcomes of work under this priority

• Improved ability to quantify change in forest and rangeland conditions over regions or management units. 
• Tools that integrate ground and remotely sensed measurements to provide estimates of vegetation, habitat attributes, and at-risk fish and wildlife populations. 
• Improved ability to project the effects of likely management and disturbance scenarios. 
• Comparative studies to understand or model changes in natural resources through time and across landscapes. Findings from these comparative studies may influence carbon management policies in the Pacific Northwest and nationally.