Forest Plan Monitoring

Monitoring Plan Transition

The 2012 Land and Resources Management regulations (36 CFR 219 – known as the 2012 Planning Rule) contain updated requirements for Forest Plan monitoring for all national forests.  Any national forest that does not intend to start a revision of its Forest Plan prior to May 9, 2016 must ensure its monitoring plan meets the new requirements of the 2012 Planning Rule.  This monitoring plan transition process must be completed by May 9, 2016. 

Since we are not currently revising and we do not intend to begin revising the Wayne National Forest’s Forest Plan prior to the deadline, we completed the monitoring plan transition.  During this transition we reviewed our existing monitoring plan (contained in Chapter 4 of the 2006 Forest Plan) and determined which of the new requirements could be met by existing questions.  We found that some changes are needed to be in full compliance with the 2012 Planning Rule, for example reporting will now be completed every other year instead of every year. In addition to reviewing questions for the 2012 Planning Rule requirements, we also considered if any questions were not providing meaningful information, required a level of expertise that we do not currently have, or were too costly or time consuming to monitor.

The monitoring plan transition is now complete through Administrative Change # 9 to the Forest Plan.  The Administrative Change, which discusses my consideration of public input, and the updated Chapter 4 (Monitoring and Evaluation) are attached below.  I anticipate the first Monitoring and Evaluation Report under this updated monitoring matrix will be completed in September of 2017.

Monitoring Reports

Below you will find links to the Monitoring documents associated with the 2006 Wayne National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan (Forest Plan).  These related documents include the Wayne National Forest Monitoring Implementation Guide, Annual Monitoring Work Plans, and Annual Monitoring Reports. 

 

Monitoring Implementation Guide - The Monitoring Implementation Guide provides guidance on how to implement the monitoring requirements set forth in the Forest Plan.  

The Annual Monitoring Work Plan provides information related to the monitoring questions from the Forest Plan that are answered each year in the Annual Monitoring Report. 

Annual Monitoring Work Plans


The Annual Monitoring Report provides comprehensive information on monitoring questions found in Chapter 4 of the Forest Plan.   Please see link “Chapter 4 of the Forest Plan” for more detailed information on Forest Plan Monitoring questions and structure.

Monitoring and Evaluation Reports