You are here--->How do you get what you want? Monitoring plan

Monitoring plan

Why do you need to monitor?

Managing the urban forest is a complex task. Even the best laid plans cannot account for all the possible situations that may arise over the course of a 20-year plan period. You will need to adjust your actions and plans over time. By monitoring your urban forest system, you can gather the information you will need to make these adjustments.

Consider this scenario: the plan for a particular site includes a goal to increase canopy cover by 10% over 20 years. The main action used to accomplish this goal involves planting a specified number of trees. Projections of tree growth for the selected species show that the goal should easily be attained. However, at the end of the 20 year period, canopy cover has scarcely changed.

What happened? We can't answer this question if we don't have monitoring records and data. Many different things could have happened to cause this outcome. For example:

• loss of existing tree canopy was greater than expected;
• many of the planted trees died and others grew poorly;
• specified trees were unavailable and substituted species were smaller or slower growing;
  
• funding was cut back, so few or no trees were planted.
  

Monitoring data can supply the information needed to determine what happened. This information can be used to choose appropriate corrective actions that would allow you to achieve your goals. This is the defining feature of adaptive management: monitoring is regularly used to help refine management.

Why do you need a monitoring plan?

In the scenario above, canopy cover change over time is the main outcome of interest. However, if you want to take corrective action, knowing about overall canopy cover change is not enough. You also need to know about the factors that interact to produce changes in canopy cover. This information will tell you why canopy cover has changed. Data of interest may include: trees losses due to storms, tree removals due to new construction, planting records, diagnoses of problems seen in new plantings, and so on. A monitoring plan lays out the types of information you need to collect. It also specifies methods for collecting and analyzing monitoring data.

Developing the monitoring plan

You can develop the monitoring plan by answering the same types of questions listed under "Getting started". The question "Why?" has already been addressed above. Other questions to answer are listed below.

1. What/where? Define the overall scope of your monitoring activities. What are you going to monitor? If you have developed clear quantifiable goals and objectives, your main monitoring targets should be clear. Which trees or program activities need to be monitored? What additional factors need to be monitored? Will you be monitoring the entire population or a sample? Your available resources may limit the scope of monitoring. You may need to set priorities and focus monitoring on the highest priority areas.

2. When? Will data be collected continuously (e.g., inventory updated by work records) or at specific intervals? Do some data need to be collected in a specific season or time of year? How frequently will you do data summary and analysis?

Note that processes involving tree growth may be slow, so relatively long observation intervals may be appropriate. In contrast, some changes can develop quickly, due to storm damage, tree removals, pest outbreaks and similar events. If change is rapid, you may need to collect and analyze data on a short time scale if you want to use the monitoring information to adjust your management in a timely fashion.

3. How? How will you gather and analyze the monitoring data? Are you already collecting the data you need (e.g., in your tree inventory)? Will you need to initiate additional sampling or record keeping? How and where will you store the data (e.g., existing GIS, new databases)?

4. Who? Who will collect, analyze, and use the information? How much staff, consultant, and volunteer time will be needed?

The goal of the monitoring plan is to provide the data needed to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and how specific management adjustments will change the outcome. You can determine what needs to be measured by constructing models that summarize what you know about how the system changes over time. The figure below illustrates a general model for canopy cover change. Both existing trees and new trees contribute to canopy cover. A variety of factors can affect how these tree grow and survive, leading to changes in canopy over time. Monitoring information can indicate which if these factors were most important for changes seen over the entire site or specific parts of it.

 

Example

The City of Redmond, WA, developed a plan for managing its forested parklands. The plan's monitoring section includes a "Balanced Scorecard". The scorecard shows how monitoring will occur for the three key elements identified in the 20-year plan: fieldwork, community, and resources. It also sets specific monitoring criteria for plan objectives.

Table 15: Green Redmond Partnership Balanced Scorecard

Objective		Measure
Restore and maintain 1,035 acres of forested parkland by 2029.		# of acres restored to annual goal
Fieldwork: All 1,035 acres are restored by 2029
Evaluate	Evaluate conditions and prioritize sites for restoration	# sites evaluated, prioritized
Plan	Develop an annual work plan	-Annual work plan identifying active management sites completed
Implement	Implement management projects optimizing ecological function	-# of site management plans completed -# of acres entered into active management -Best practices updated annually
Monitor	Monitor and maintain sites over the long term	-Annual monitoring report -Maintenance performed as indicated
Community: An informed, involved, and active civic community supports the Green Redmond Partnership.
Community	Educate and engage community about problem and solution through Green Redmond Partnership	Outreach and education program materials developed
	Community supports and demands active management of forested parklands through widespread understanding of the issue and support of Green Redmond Partnership as solution	-% of residents volunteering each year -# of return volunteers
Volunteers	Engage youth and community organizations in management and monitoring	-# of groups participating in events -# of hours contributed
	Encourage businesses to contribute to program goals	-# of businesses supporting program through sponsorship, in-kind contributions, or volunteer events -# of businesses that stop selling invasive plants
	Train Forest Stewards in volunteer management and BMPs	# of Forest Stewards trained and actively holding events
	Demonstrate appreciation for volunteers and seek input into program	-# of volunteer suggestions implemented -# of volunteer recognition activities
Resources: Sufficient resources are available to actively manage sites and provide long-term maintenance.
Financial	Continue current funding	$ budgeted and sourced to meet management requirements
	Develop long-term, stable public funding source	Mechanisms in place by 2014 sufficient to meet need
Paid Staff and Labor	Provide sufficient staff to support field work, volunteer management, and Partnership programs	-# staff/crew dedicated -# acres entered into restoration by staff/crew
	Hire paid crews for priority sites lacking volunteer support or sites with difficult conditions	-% of priority sites in annual plan not being restored by volunteer efforts entered into restoration -% of contract crews trained in BMPs
Volunteer Labor	Increase number of volunteer hours to 14,000 per year by 2015 and 24,000 by 2018	# of hours to annual goal, value contribution of volunteer (staff cost per volunteer hour)
	Increase productivity by providing support and materials to volunteers	-$ and hours/acre enrolled -Staff cost per volunteer hour

Green Redmond Partnership 20-year Forest Management Plan, Part 4 Adaptive Management, p. 48

 

Planning questions

• What do we need to monitor to determine if the plan is having its desired effects?
• What questions do we need to answer to improve our urban forest management?
• How can we ensure that monitoring data is used to improve and update our management techniques?

Work plan

Use this worksheet to schedule the tasks involved in developing the monitoring plan

Topic	Drafted by:	Target completion date:
Scope of monitoring
Frequency of data collection needed
Methods for collecting data
Data storage and analysis
Reporting and use of results

Save to work plan

Outline

You can use the matrix below to draft your monitoring plan. For each goal and objective that you list, indicate:
- what types of data will be collected
- the methods that will be used to collect data
- how frequently data will be collected
- how and where data will be entered and stored
- what type of data analysis and reporting will be done.
Persons or positions responsible for each step can also be listed in the "Data collected", "Data storage", and "Analysis and reporting" fields.

Monitoring plan matrix
Goal / Objective	Data collected	Monitoring methods	Data collection frequency	Data storage	Analysis & reporting
(list goal/objective)

Save to Outline-goes to Monitoring the effectiveness of this plan

Next-Compile plan