Northwest Forest Plan

Monitoring Module Lead

The module lead for late-successional/old-growth forest (LSOG) monitoring is Raymond Davis, biologist with the US Forest Service. His office is located in the Pacific Northwest Research Station's Forestry Sciences Lab in Corvallis, Oregon. Ray is the principal contact for the LSOG monitoring program and may be reached via phone at 541-750-7179 or via e-mail at rjdavis@fs.fed.us.

Vegetation Mapping

Vegetation mapping provides the basic data for monitoring LSOG forests. Because of the large area being monitored (millions of acres), vegetation is mapped using remotely-sensed data (Landsat time-series data from the LandTrendr algorithms), as well as field data from regional forest inventory plots, using nearest-neighbor imputation. Vegetation mapping is provided by the Landscape Ecology, Modeling, Mapping, and Analysis (LEMMA) team, comprised of employees of the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW), and the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, Oregon State University (OSU), and based at the Forestry Sciences Lab on the OSU campus. Current LEMMA team members who are involved with NWFP Effectiveness Monitoring include:

• Janet Ohmann, PNW -- team leader and Research Forest Ecologist
• Matthew Gregory, OSU - GIS Analyst/Programmer
• Heather Roberts, OSU - Database Administrator/GIS Analyst

The LEMMA team provides a time-series of maps of forest species and structure attributes as ArcGIS grids. These datasets are used to generate maps of LSOG forests, as well as habitat maps for other species, such as the northern spotted owl, being monitored under the Northwest Forest Plan.

Change Detection Mapping

Changes in forest vegetation are also being monitored remotely via data from Landsat satellites. An algorithm has been developed to take advantage of long-term trends in Landsat spectral response to capture, label, and map these changes. The algorithm, Landsat-based Detection of Trends in Disturbance and Recovery (LandTrendr), captures nearly the full range of disturbances intensities across an array of disturbance agents. LandTrendr was developed by personnel from the Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing in Ecology (LARSE), a collaborative research lab supported by the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW) and Oregon State University (OSU). LandTrendr results are collaboratively integrated into LEMMA mapping efforts. LARSE members involved with NWFP change mapping include:

• Warren Cohen, PNW - Director
• Robert Kennedy, OSU - Director (and LandTrendr developer)
• Zhiqiang Yang, OSU - Co-Director
• Justin Braaten, OSU - Research Analyst

Wildfire in NWFP Forests

Wildfire is an important natural ecosystem process that occurs with various frequency and severity across the NWFP area. It has also been one of the major causes for change in forest vegetation during the first phases of our monitoring. Scientific support to better understand this process and its role within the NWFP forests is provided by Tom Spies, a Research Ecologist at the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, in Corvallis, Oregon, and Matthew Reilly, a Ph.D. student in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon. They are working to develop a conceptual model to characterize the ecological effects of fire and forest succession following fire at multiple scales and time frames using forest inventory plots and remote-sensed imagery.

This work should also help us to better interpret the changes we observe in the vegetation data, as well as the change detection data. For example, they will be looking at the ingrowth side of the old-growth forest change equation to try to better understand what underlying forest structure dynamics might give rise to increases in old growth and how that varies across the region.