Have we been successful? Monitoring horizontal forest complexity for forest restoration projects

Abstract

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.

A generalizable monitoring model to implement policies to promote forest restoration – A case study in São Paulo - Brazil

“…Therefore, adaptive management has been viewed as a very promising conceptual framework for defining forest management and policy formulations (Rist et al, 2016;Vacik and Lexer, 2013). Adaptive management is a continuing cycle of four activities, namely planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, in which monitoring and data interpretation play essential parts in the whole planning cycle (Dickinson et al, 2016).…”

“…Once defined, the outcomes of a plan have to be monitored by means of performance indicators that were specially defined to measure how close the managed forest is to reaching expected goals and whether the planned interventions have been effective. Unfortunately, and probably due to the spatial scale of most forest problems, technological limitations, and the large amounts of data needed, the detailed integration and modelling of the monitoring phase is not usually considered when dealing with forest policy or management planning formulations (Dickinson et al, 2016).…”

Grain and Extent Considerations Are Integral for Monitoring Landscape-Scale Desired Conditions in Fire-Adapted Forests

“…Understanding spatial and temporal patterns in forested landscapes is an important component of ecosystem complexity and forest ecology. However, these are difficult concepts to quantify and capture for land management practitioners and non-technical stakeholders [10][11][12]. Forests are composed of a mosaic of patches, differing in their structure, shape, and spatial arrangement, and these patterns affect overall ecological processes [10,13,14].…”

Variability in Mixed Conifer Spatial Structure Changes Understory Light Environments

“…However, historical spatial patterns used as reference sites can vary considerably [14]. Futher, various implementation methods can lead to a range of outcomes in spatial pattern that may differ from treatment objectives which may vary considerably in their congruency with historical spatial patterns [13,14,20,[26][27][28][29][30]. Decisions related to residual tree spatial pattern impact a number of important abiotic and biotic factors such as light availability, nutrient availability, and tree establishment and growth [31][32][33][34][35].…”