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Forest management today often seeks to restore ecological integrity and enhance human well‐being by increasing forest complexity, resilience, and functionality. However, effective and financially expedient monitoring of forest complexity is challenging. In this study, we developed a practical and inexpensive technique to measure horizontal forest complexity. This monitoring method uses intuitively understandable data (imagery) and facilitates stakeholder participation in the adaptive management process within collaborative projects. We used this technique to determine if current restoration projects are successfully achieving their spatial restoration goals. We focused on the Colorado Front Range Landscape Restoration Initiative (CFRLRI) as a representative of the typical collaborative restoration projects underway in formerly fire‐dependent dry conifer forests. The developed monitoring method is practical and cost‐effective by using free aerial imagery to map, quantify, and analyze the distribution of canopy cover pre‐ and post‐treatment. We found the CFRLRI has successfully reduced canopy cover (from 44 to 26% on average) and increased some aspects of horizontal forest complexity. The application of these monitoring techniques has allowed the CFRLRI collaborative group to objectively quantify changes to horizontal forest complexity, and has facilitated stakeholder communication about forest spatial patterns. These methods could be adapted for use by other similar forest restoration projects around the world by utilizing increasingly available satellite or aerial imagery.

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Abstract:The 2010 Church's Park Fire burned beetle-killed lodgepole pine stands in Colorado, including recently salvage-logged areas, creating a fortuitous opportunity to compare the effects of salvage logging, wildfire and the combination of logging followed by wildfire. Here, we examine tree regeneration, surface fuels, understory plants, inorganic soil nitrogen and water infiltration in uncut and logged stands, outside and inside the fire perimeter. Subalpine fir recruitment was abundant in uncut, unburned, beetle-killed stands, whereas lodgepole pine recruitment was abundant in cut stands. Logging roughly doubled woody fuel cover and halved forb and shrub cover. Wildfire consumed all conifer seedlings in uncut and cut stands and did not stimulate new conifer regeneration within four years of the fire. Aspen regeneration, in contrast, was relatively unaffected by logging or burning, alone or combined. Wildfire also drastically reduced cover of soil organic horizons, fine woody fuels, graminoids and shrubs relative to unburned, uncut areas; moreover, the compound effect of logging and wildfire was generally similar to wildfire alone. This case study documents scarce conifer regeneration but ample aspen regeneration after a wildfire that occurred in the later stage of a severe beetle outbreak. Salvage logging had mixed effects on tree regeneration, understory plant and surface cover and soil nitrogen, but neither exacerbated nor ameliorated wildfire effects on those resources.