Monitoring

Monitoring the basic demographic patterns of tree and forest regeneration, growth, mortality, and competition are fundamental to understanding and managing forested ecosystems. In Utah, forest patterns have always been shaped by natural disturbance processes such as fire, bark beetle outbreaks, pathogens and drought. Understanding how those interact and change over time is crucial if we wish to manage forests into the future. Careful monitoring of natural and managed forest stands of all forest types in the state is an important goal of the Utah Forest Restoration Institute.

Monitoring regeneration after disturbances such as wildfire and bark beetle outbreaks, but also anthropogenic disturbance such as timber harvesting or chaining, is an important way to evaluate whether the desired species are recovering. Large fires can result in landscapes that appear destroyed and the regeneration of trees in these landscapes is important for forest recovery. Species like aspen commonly respond to even the highest severity fires, such as the Brian Head fire that burned over 60,000 acres in 2017. Similarly, much of the state's Engelmann spruce forests have succumbed to spruce beetle outbreaks during the 1980s, 90s, and into the 2000s. The future of these forests relies heavily on whether trees regenerate in the wake of these disturbances, and whether the species we desire are present. The Utah Forest Restoration Institute wants to facilitate the monitoring of post-disturbance environments.

Fuel loading in Utah's forest is a serious problem. Monitoring whether or not fuels reduction treatments meet the goals of reducing fuel loading and/or decreasing fire risk is an important part of any land management process. As fuels reduction projects increase in number and area, the Utah Forest Restoration Institute is keenly interested to help all landowners monitor and assess effectiveness to ensure goals are met and continued application of treatments uses the best available scientific information. Documenting and avoiding any negative unintended effects from fuels treatments is crucially important in addressing our fire risk problem. We will work with all interested parties in the state and the region to help plan, implement, monitor, and adapt state-of-the-art fuels reduction treatments, approaches, and techniques.