Chapter 3—The Art and Science of Restoration

• 3.13 Documentation, Monitoring, and Adaptive Management
  • 3.13.1 Adaptive Management
  • 3.13.2 Determining Levels of Monitoring
  • 3.13.3 Establishing Monitoring Procedures for a Project
  • 3.13.4 Incorporating Monitoring Into a Project
• 3.14 Project Maintenance
  • 3.14.1 Site Management
    • 3.14.1a Irrigation
    • 3.14.1b Mulching
    • 3.14.1c Soil Amendments
    • 3.14.1d Stabilizing Erosion
    • 3.14.1e Wildlife Damage
    • 3.14.1f Frost Heave
    • 3.14.1g Interplanting or Replanting
    • 3.14.1h Exotic Species
  • 3.14.2 People Management
    • 3.14.2a Signs
    • 3.14.2b Barriers
    • 3.14.2c Replacing Structures That Fail
    • 3.14.2d Maintaining Social Trails
    • 3.14.2e New Impacts Caused by Displaced Use
  • 3.14.3 Scheduling Maintenance
  • 3.14.4 Concluding Thoughts on Maintenance
    
    

3.13 Documentation, Monitoring, and Adaptive Management

Monitoring project success is easy to overlook in restoration plans, but should be part of any restoration project, even at the planning stage. This is especially true given the highly variable and often experimental nature of restoration. Slight differences in site microclimate, soil chemistry, timing of field work, or perhaps even passing weather conditions can cause radically different results, even when nearly identical methods are used.

Monitoring may detect problems while there is still time to correct them and will provide a long-term record of results that others can refer to. Depending on the need and your budget, monitoring might be fairly simple (figure 3-143) or quite detailed. Monitoring might be qualitative, quantitative, or both.

Figure 3-143—Good documentation of restoration treatments is
critical during monitoring. Intern Alexis Bachrach was able to satisfy
the requirements for her college senior project by serving on a
restoration crew and preparing the project documentation.

In this section, we will explore different levels of monitoring performed by the Forest Service on restoration projects. We will consider factors involved in designing a monitoring program. Finally, we will review a simple monitoring protocol and suggest resources for selecting and designing more complex monitoring protocols. Sample monitoring forms are included in appendix E, Forms.

3.13.1 Adaptive Management

The goal of monitoring is to gain the understanding needed for a better job of management. Monitoring may result in midcourse corrections (figures 3-144a and 144b) to prevent further deterioration or to improve restoration success. If users continue to enter a restoration site for example, barriers or signs may need to be improved, or enforcement of regulations may need to be increased. Monitoring may show that excess water running through a site needs to be addressed. A failed planting may require another planting using a different approach or under different conditions. The key to adaptive management is taking new information, quickly devising a more successful strategy, and implementing it.

Figures 3-144a and 144b—This restoration site, first planted in 1980,
started as a bare, compacted, and eroded slope. The site was treated
with soil scarification, wildling plugs of partridgefoot (Leutkea pectinata),
and jute netting. In the late 1980s, the site was reworked by scarifying
soil between the plugs, adding rock for microhabitat and erosion control,
and adding a layer of excelsior erosion control blanket. By 1993, when
this photo (top) was taken, the partridgefoot was spreading. The
erosion-control blanket prevented about 2 inches (50 millimeters)
of additional soil loss (bottom).

3.13.2 Determining Levels of Monitoring

Anyone developing a monitoring plan or procedure for restoration projects should have a clear idea of the levels of monitoring that are needed and the degree to which they should be emphasized. If plans for the project were based on little or no field experience, validation monitoring may be a high priority. Likewise, if work is being done under contract or by volunteer crews, implementation monitoring may be an area of concern. A high level of effectiveness monitoring should be included in any restoration project. Because most restoration projects won't be completed for many years, effectiveness monitoring allows procedures to be adjusted to fit site-specific conditions. Effectiveness monitoring is an integral part of implementing the project activities.

Determining the Need for Validation Monitoring

Validation monitoring should be included to the extent that the project can be used to validate the standards and guidelines that have driven the project. The monitoring should include a sound accounting of the project's scheduling, materials, and so forth, as well as an accounting of any significant difficulties or constraints that arose. This might involve simply taking notes or preparing a narrative summary of the project's progress, or it may involve a more formal analysis.

Validation monitoring is especially important if the restoration project is responsive to a land-management plan or other decisions that were based on an environmental impact statement. In cases where a project cannot reasonably achieve objectives set forth in a land-management plan, validation monitoring may dictate further NEPA analysis, such as a forest plan amendment. Monitoring may provide the feedback needed to correct policy or regulations.

Determining the Need for Implementation Monitoring

Implementation monitoring will depend on the amount of detail used in planning the project, as well as the degree of flexibility built into the plan. This kind of monitoring requires that the project plan include fairly detailed specifications, especially for structural work such as constructing checkdams, backfilling eroded areas, installing erosion-control netting, and so forth. In essence, implementation monitoring can be seen mainly as inspection to ensure the quality of work. The inspection should be used to ensure that the end product meets objectives, not merely to show how and where the project fell short.

Particularly when working with volunteers, Forest Service crews, or other groups without a formal contract, implementation monitoring can be used to adjust specifications during implementation of the project. Doing so is especially important when workloads prove greater than anticipated, weather prevents work from being accomplished, or other problems arise. In general, the greater the scope and complexity of the project, the greater the importance of implementation monitoring.

Determining the Need for Effectiveness Monitoring

Typically, monitoring restoration sites entails monitoring the condition of site vegetation. The methods of monitoring or the indicators selected will vary with the type of vegetation involved and the techniques used to reestablish natural vegetation, as well as with the overall goals and objectives of the project.

The scale of the project will determine to some extent the kinds of monitoring techniques that should be employed. For smaller projects, it may be feasible to take detailed data on every plant on the site; for larger projects, permanent plots or random sampling techniques may be preferable.

The species of plants involved may dictate certain methods of monitoring. For example, different monitoring strategies might be employed when working with trees rather than grasses. With grasses, percent cover may be an excellent indicator of success, while with trees, height may be a better indicator. When direct seeding is used, a good indicator of success might be the number of stems per square foot or square meter. Percent survival would be a better indicator of success when planting plugs (figure 3-145).

Figure 3-145—Tracking percent survival is easier if the site
broken into smaller units, such as the area between checkdams.
This project was at Lake Mary in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, WA.

Some possible indicators commonly used by ecologists include: total percent cover, percent cover by species; plant height; number of stems per given area, stem diameter, stem or plant size class, and survival rates for plugs or seedlings. Some indicators are more qualitative in nature, such as lists of species composition or classification of plant vigor. Although quantitative measures are more commonly used in monitoring, qualitative measures, such as vigor classification, can be very important. Standard vigor classification schemes can indicate whether plants are able to produce viable seed, an indicator that a site may be on its way to becoming self-maintaining.

Factors such as ongoing erosion, effectiveness of erosion-control structures, and effectiveness of barriers should be monitored. An effectiveness monitoring protocol also should consider whether use has been displaced, and if so, what the impacts of the displaced use might be. Use may shift locally, to other nearby locations, or to areas farther away.

Other Monitoring Design Considerations

In some cases, information such as percent cover by species may not be important. A project may aim simply to eliminate human use and allow natural recovery. In that case, the percent screening between the work site and a passing trail may be the best indicator of success. On the other hand, if a project aims at true ecological restoration, technical factors, such as soil bulk density or litter depth, may be better indicators of success.

In projects that do not aim for full restoration in the short term, monitoring may be best designed with incremental objectives in mind. For instance, rebuilding soils or soil structure may be a more attainable goal than reestablishment of natural vegetation. In such projects, monitoring the depth of trail erosion (or the level of deposition behind checkdams) might be indicators of success. In other cases, qualitative measures could be used as indicators of success-perhaps simply monitoring public compliance with "Keep Off" signs, or monitoring the reappearance of fire rings or litter.

Some projects may focus on eradicating weed species or altering vegetative composition. The percentages of different species growing on the site, or the mere presence of certain species, may serve as the best basis for monitoring. Projects that transport plant material or soil into the wilderness should always include some monitoring for the accidental introduction of nonnative species.

In any case, the project's goals and objectives should determine the levels and methods of monitoring used. Although many projects will focus on effectiveness monitoring, some combination of implementation, effectiveness, and validation monitoring is desirable.

3.13.3 Establishing Monitoring Procedures for a Project

Solicit interdisciplinary input when establishing procedures for monitoring (figure 3-146). For validation monitoring, consult trail maintenance and design specialists, wilderness specialists, hydrologists, engineers, botanists, recreation planners, NEPA specialists, or others with technical backgrounds.

Figure 3-146—Three separate attempts have failed to
restore this wilderness campsite. Monitoring can help us
learn from our failures as well as our successes.

For effectiveness monitoring, consult resource specialists with direct working knowledge of the site and the project's physical and social objectives, such as botanists, ecologists, wilderness rangers, soil scientists, range conservationists, and others with similar expertise. Workers with hands-on field expertise need to be involved, because effectiveness monitoring tends to be the most detailed and take the most time of the three types of monitoring.

3.13.4 Incorporating Monitoring Into a Project

Project monitoring will help determine whether the site restoration goals have been met.

Planning Phase

A critical aspect of monitoring is the need for feedback to be provided in sufficient detail and in a timely fashion. Validation monitoring may begin during a project's initial planning stages. If a project's costs or its logistical problems begin to seem unreasonable, it may be necessary to reexamine standards and guidelines that mandate the proposed action. As a project progresses and implementation and effectiveness monitoring are taking place, validation monitoring should be used to ensure that policy matches reality. Validation monitoring can contribute to policy change at high levels that can save large amounts of work time and funds.

Implementation Phase

While validation monitoring may continue throughout the project's life, implementation monitoring becomes key during all phases with on-the-ground work. Implementation monitoring should guide daily work schedules, ensuring high-quality results. Implementation monitoring must be ongoing with a short response time, enabling crews to adjust their work methods and allowing project leaders or contract administrators to make corrections to schedules or specifications as needed. Remember that the goal of implementation monitoring should be to ensure that objectives are met, not to analyze why they were not.

Implementation monitoring includes documentation of the work accomplished: location of restoration sites, stabilization treatments, soil treatments, planting treatments, plant protection measures, signs, and so forth. Photopoints should be established that document conditions before work began, and after the treatment is in place. These photopoints will continue to be used as part of effectiveness monitoring.

As part of implementation monitoring, consider having crews keep a daily journal of work activities and other useful observations. For example, if crews keep track of how much time they spend on each component of their work, the records will help you judge the accuracy of your original budget estimates. Consider incorporating additional information in the journal. This information might include daily encounters with visitors, campsite occupancy data, or even wildlife sightings. A well-kept field journal can help answer questions years after a project has been completed (see figure 3-143).

Followup and Maintenance Phase

Effectiveness monitoring may begin while the project is being implemented. However, the most important factor when incorporating effectiveness monitoring is to think long term (figures 3-147a, 147b, 147c, and 147d). Restoration often spans many years or decades. A project that appears to be an immediate success or failure may not be over the long term. Effectiveness monitoring may be done annually, on a 3-year rotation, or over even longer intervals. Annual monitoring may be appropriate during the early years of a project, but monitoring may be scaled back during later years. In all cases, effectiveness monitoring should be done in a fashion that allows managers to respond to problems with project design and to improving or deteriorating conditions.

Figure 3-147a—A high school student had the pleasure of
planting the plants he grew for his senior project.

Figure 3-147b—The erosion-control blanket is the most
obvious sign of restoration in this 1995 photo.

Figure 3-147c—Conditions were still good in 1997. Two rock steps
had come loose and needed fixing or replacement. Plants were
surviving and erosion was largely stabilized. A second application
of erosion-control blanket would be beneficial.

Figure 3-147d—By 2002, the rock steps really needed some help.
The vegetation continued to mature and fill in. Other plants seeded
themselves from the nearby meadow and had become established.

This series of photographs documents 8 years of progress during restoration of one of the two trails accessing Lake Mary in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, WA. The restoration crew installed rock steps on the open portion of this trail that is used only by hikers. The other half of the trail was restored using checkdams, fill, greenhouse-grown transplants, and an excelsior erosion-control blanket.

Monitoring Methodologies

Monitoring methodologies range from taking simple qualitative observations to more complex quantitative measurements. Design your methods based on the questions you need to answer and the resources available to accomplish the work. It helps to break restoration sites into smaller units for documentation and monitoring. For example, you might keep track of the number of plantings between each checkdam, with the checkdam serving as a reference point. Appendix E, Forms, contains sample forms you can modify when designing your own approach.

A simple approach is to notice and document obvious factors that contribute to the project's success and trends that point toward recovery or failure. Most wilderness restoration projects are so small that the entire site can be evaluated. Sample questions might include:

• Is water flowing around or through the site as planned?
  
  
• Are erosion-control measures working?
  
  
• How many transplants have survived?
  
  
• What seeded species have become established?
  
  
• Which species have volunteered?
  
  
• What is the overall vigor of each species? Are the plants stunted? Discolored? Flowering? Fruiting? Spreading? Is an additional treatment needed to improve plant health?
  
  
• Are plants being disturbed by animal activities such as herbivory? Do such problems need to be mitigated with an additional treatment?
  
  
• Are sites being disturbed by human activities? Does this disturbance need to be addressed
  
  through further engineering, education, or enforcement?
  
• Are signs and barriers still in place?
  
  
• Does the site include any introduced plant species (weed them out!) or diseased transplants?
  
  
• What are the changes in species composition?
  
  
• What is the percent ground cover? Canopy cover?
  
  
• Are plants at the prescribed stocking levels? Do you need to plan for additional plantings?

Some projects might require more detailed methods of monitoring. Techniques that have been used to measure species composition and percent cover include line-intercept transects, radial transects, and quadrats (Potash and Aubry 1997; Redente 1993; Rochefort 1990). Projects outside wilderness might use engineered structures to measure active erosion. Some projects may track individual plantings. Larger projects will require a sampling procedure (figure 3-148) rather than a complete census. An ecologist and statistician can help you design appropriate protocols.

Figure 3-148—Wilderness research scientist David Cole, coauthor of this
guide, goes to extraordinary lengths to prevent further impact to vegetation
while counting plants during a study in the Eagle Cap Wilderness, OR.

Recording and Reporting Monitoring Results

When designing the monitoring for a restoration project, include concrete steps that will be taken to manage and report on the data collected through the monitoring process. Think ahead to consider how monitoring results may be a catalyst for changes in policy, ongoing management of your project area, or the design of future projects.

Information related to validation monitoring should be passed along to appropriate decisionmakers or planning staff. Any significant discrepancies found through validation monitoring could be included in annual forest plan monitoring reports or similar reports that will bring these situations to the attention of others. Information pertaining to implementation monitoring needs to be acted on promptly. Problems should be identified and explained to contractors or work crews, noted in work logs or inspection reports, and dealt with in a manner that will ensure situations are corrected before further loss of productivity or project quality. It is important to document the findings of implementation monitoring properly, but it is perhaps more important to relay those findings in a timely manner to persons responsible for implementing the work.

Data collected during effectiveness monitoring may be the most difficult to analyze, requiring technical skills and a long-term vision of how project objectives will be met. Because data collection will be ongoing in most cases, it may be wise to develop a database (or at least a good filing system) for data that will accumulate over several years. The data should be summarized periodically and used in planning maintenance of this project or similar projects. Summaries of this kind of data will be especially useful to those developing budgets and work plans or to resource specialists involved in restoration. Consider making this data more widely available to researchers and practitioners of restoration. Refer to appendix D, Case Studies, for an example of a monitoring report.

Monitoring Summary

A key element to any restoration project is developing a monitoring process. Monitoring should be thought of in terms of the three types: validation, implementation, and effectiveness monitoring. The monitoring process should be tailored to the objectives and scope of the project, as well as to the ecological and vegetative components of the site. Technical help from specialists should be used to develop specific procedures for each project. If the true benefits of monitoring are to be realized, data from monitoring must be analyzed, summarized, and reported to appropriate personnel.

3.14 Project Maintenance

Plans for restoration projects should include time and money for maintenance. Identifying funding can be tricky, because a restoration project may have a special project funding source that ends once the initial work has been completed.

Based on either formal or informal observations and monitoring, you will determine whether your treatments are likely to succeed. If the desired plant species are thriving, soils are stable, and the signs and visitors are in the proper places, you can jump for joy and walk away. But some of your treatments may need additional work to address ongoing erosion, lack of plant vigor, or ongoing impacts from human use.

Because of high turnover among seasonal staff, new employees may take over a long-term maintenance program. It is important to document the site-specific maintenance tasks in an action plan, including any specific concerns and where signs need to go. Otherwise, your new wilderness rangers will visit your project area and be unable to spot details that need attention.

3.14.1 Site Management

Site maintenance might require ongoing treatments (such as irrigating and mulching plantings, or amending the soil), repairs, or even modifications to the treatment.

3.14.1a Irrigation

Plantings may need several years of watering before deep root systems become established. Unless plantings are watered by hand, irrigation systems will need regular inspection to fix leaky, broken, or malfunctioning components. An irrigation log should be kept to document the amount and frequency of watering.

The Respect the River program on the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests has a unique approach to getting this job done-restoration sites have a small sign inviting forest visitors to help out with watering! This approach seems to be working and helps visitors become part of the solution (figure 3-149).

Click on image for large and descriptive view

Figure 3-149—Visitors can help with
watering if they are encouraged to do so.

3.14.1b Mulching

Depending on the material, mulch loses its effectiveness after a few years. Unless plantings have become fairly well established by then, a new layer of mulch may have to be added to preserve soil moisture and to provide protection from the elements.

3.14.1c Soil Amendments

If plantings look stunted or discolored, this may be a sign of a nutrient imbalance. A feeding of nitrogen may be needed because nitrogen disappears rapidly from the soil. Until the site has an adequate supply of litter, native nitrogen sources may be lacking. See section 3.2.3c, Amending Altered or Depleted Soils, to determine an approach that is appropriate for your site.

3.14.1d Stabilizing Erosion

Ongoing erosion damage could take many forms, requiring different solutions. Running water may be causing further damage to a restoration site, or perhaps your attempts to move water away from your site have created a new problem somewhere nearby. Maintenance work might include directing water away from a site, spreading water out more effectively across a site, repairing malfunctioning erosion-control structures such as siltbars or checkdams, adding structures to slow water and collect silt, or adding mulch.

3.14.1e Wildlife Damage

Structures put in place to prevent animals from eating plants may need to be repositioned or replaced. Nutrient-rich plantings can be attractive to animals. Ants can march away with all your seed. Section 3.12, Plant Protection and Establishment, offers suggestions for managing these problems.

3.14.1f Frost Heave

Some plantings may be forced out of the ground by frost. If the plants are still alive, they will need to be reset. Set plants back into a shallow depression and firmly compress the soil around each plant. Additional mulch also may be applied to prevent frost heave.

3.14.1g Interplanting or Replanting

Additional plantings may be necessary if goals for the desired abundance and species diversity have not been met. But this problem may be an indicator that Mother Nature has different ideas of what is feasible than you do. Before replanting, work with your team to figure out what went wrong and how it might be corrected. The Limiting Factors chart in appendix A, Treatments To Manage Factors Limiting Restoration, will help you think through such problems.

Here are some examples. Perhaps the reference community is not appropriate for your site—a plant species only found in open meadows may not survive in shade (The author speaks from experience!). Perhaps you were trying to move toward the reference condition too quickly and need to start with early successional species. Perhaps the plant stock type was not well suited to your site. The list goes on and on. If a planting has failed to perform, do your best to figure out why, devise a new strategy, and replant.

It may be that adding additional species would help meet the reference community's plant structure. Try direct sowing seed onto your site during the same period when seed would fall to the ground naturally, or use other onsite propagation techniques. You may need to collect additional plant material for propagation offsite.

3.14.1h Exotic Species

Be sure to have a botanist or someone else who can recognize wayward plant species visit your site. Weed out any exotic species! Record their loathsome presence in your monitoring logs, and try to determine how they got into the wilderness. Chances are the invaders stowed away with plant materials or soil brought in from offsite. Or you may have released dormant seed from the soil's seed bank when you loosened and watered the soil.

One helpful tool is a weed finder—a little field guide with colored photos of potential weed species for your site (figure 3-150). Include photos of plants at different life stages—seedlings, plants in flower, and plants in fruit. This guide might include any nonnative plant species found growing near where your plant materials were propagated and stored. It should also include any weed species known to be in that portion of the backcountry or at the trailhead. This weed finder will be a tremendous asset to anyone who checks the site but lacks botanical expertise.

Figure 3-150—Site monitoring and maintenance require careful
attention to spot introduced plant species. An area-specific weed
finder depicting nonnative species that may have been stowaways
on plant stock or other materials will help members of your crew.

3.14.2 People Management

Managing continuing recreation use of the area is another part of the maintenance battle. Your goal is to concentrate the use where you want it and to keep the use off of your fragile restoration site.

3.14.2a Signs

Signs need to be maintained until they are no longer needed. Just one group tying stock up in your restoration site might undo thousands of dollars of backbreaking work in two quick hours-the voice of experience again. If your project is in a remote area, but not in wilderness, it may be helpful to lay in a small stash of extra signs there, or to have visiting personnel carry extra signs so problems can be remedied when they are spotted.

At some point, use patterns at a project site may have established themselves so that the signs are no longer needed. For example, it is more important to keep signs at the site when plantings are small than after they have become established. If you take signs down, monitor your success fairly soon to determine whether they may need to be replaced.

3.14.2b Barriers

It may be necessary to maintain or add barriers to keep folks where you want them. Some barriers may get rearranged or carted off. Perhaps they just weren't big enough in the first place.

3.14.2c Replacing Structures That Fail

Structures installed to check erosion, or to harden campsites or trails, can fail. It may be necessary to reposition or replace some of your work.

3.14.2d Maintaining Social Trails

Part of your planning effort was to figure out which social trails to keep. Provide these trails with enough maintenance to keep use on the trails, and off fragile vegetation. This may mean providing drainage, cutting brush, cutting fallen logs (figure 3-151), or maintaining barriers.

Figure 3-151-The restored trail to the left was recovering quite
well until the heavily limbed subalpine fir fell across the main social
trail to the right. Because the fallen tree was on a social trail, it wasn't
included in the maintenance contract in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness,
WA. Wilderness personnel removed limbs with a pruning saw, hoping
to redirect use onto the proper trail.

3.14.2e New Impacts Caused by Displaced Use

Preventive maintenance should be done quickly if impacts shift to other locations. For example, users may decide to start new campsites, or walk across vegetated areas, forming new trails. It may be necessary to implement a variety of strategies to absorb the change appropriately, or to stop the damaging practice.

3.14.3 Scheduling Maintenance

In general, maintenance needs to be more intensive during the first few years after a project while problems are being addressed and new plantings are gaining a toehold. Afterward, maintenance may become more periodic. Keep in mind that even something as simple as a missing sign can have great consequences.

It is important to visit restoration sites when runoff is at its peak to assess erosion problems. If the public frequents the area during snowmelt, it is important to assess potential problems then. It also is a good idea to check restoration sites during peak-use periods when crowding can lead to problems. If ongoing irrigation is critical to the project's success, the site needs to be visited during droughty times of the year.

3.14.4 Concluding Thoughts on Maintenance

Restoration work requires long-term maintenance. While the intensity of maintenance tapers off with time, most projects require upkeep for many years, if not decades. Remember to leave good tracks for those who follow in your footsteps, and have fun and stay humble in your role as wilderness guardian.