CHAPTER 21

Monitoring and Management

All landscape management is purposeful and reflects specific goals, such as the restoration of an historic plant community. Nevertheless, given the current state of knowledge about ecological restoration and the deteriorating condition of many landscapes, there is no clearly defined path to achieve ecological objectives. We are embarking on a journey that must be informed by science and continually monitored in order to be effective.

At the 1996 annual conference of the Society for Ecological Restoration at Rutgers University, a group of scientists gathered to provide peer review for several ongoing forest restoration projects in the region. The first question was about monitoring, and the topic did not change all afternoon. All those who attended were involved in on-the-ground restoration projects and already facing the difficulties of documenting a site adequately. They pressed the scientists repeatedly for answers about what is most important to monitor and how to do it. At the end of several hours the following key recommendations stood out:

 

• Monitor and record all restoration projects.

The best way to monitor and measure progress and learn through experience is to closely observe and record what is happening on the ground. Without the ability to assess the consequences of management, we cannot justify any action we take. In addition, monitoring provides new knowledge that we can pass on to others.

 

• Consider keeping a complete photographic record with an accompanying descriptive narrative of site observations as a first step in site documentation.

You can do this with minimal tools, such as a camera and a USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) “quad sheet,” a topographic survey at a scale of 1 inch to 2,000 feet (1:24,000). On some sites it may be easier for you to record site information on an aerial photograph. Both quad sheets and aerial photos are generally available from public agencies, such as your local county planning commission or state agency for environmental protection, as well as private suppliers. Taken regularly, the images record a broad picture of landscape succession, including unintentional but valuable observations. Your photographic record and written narrative will form the basis of your site database.

 

• Aim high despite current limitations on time, funding, and experience.

Your ultimate success will depend on how well you know the site, so give the issue of monitoring adequate creative attention. You will be grateful later that you invested the energy in keeping records despite how cumbersome it seems at the outset. If time or budgets are small or even if you are an individual working alone, it is important to remember that if you monitor nothing else, at least monitor whatever interventions you make and what you observe to follow them. Lack of funding is not an excuse for failing to monitor, although it requires setting priorities concerning what things are most important to monitor and how to do it.

 

• Work closely with local scientists.

Monitoring, more than any other aspect of restoration, requires effective communication with the scientific community. Involve local scientists with expertise in water systems, plants, animals, soils, geomorphology, and other areas in the restoration team and the project’s advisory group. You will not be able to strategize effectively without accurate scientific information, so you must obtain the expertise you need.

 

• Develop a system for recording site information that is permanent and convenient.

A data recording system’s ease of use often determines whether or not it is used as intended. If sites are difficult to locate on a map or on the ground, it discourages documentation. Consider installing permanent metal markers, as well as visible physical features, to identify your major plot sites. Many parks use a grid system to identify locations, but specific sites may be difficult to locate in the field in forested conditions. In such a case, you might consider the use of a “Global Positioning System” (GPS), which connects to a satellite network in order to pinpoint specific locations in the field. With a GPS you can digitize your field position almost automatically, eliminating many difficulties of locating your data accurately on a site map, especially on larger sites, and allowing you to record observations at the designated locations.

Three strategies are key to developing an effective monitoring program: a restoration team that is responsible for monitoring; a site database and management log that documents conditions, actions, and their consequences; and a landscape restoration model, which serves as a reference ecosystem and a standard for evaluating success of the project. In addition, you will need to institute procedures for the following:

The Restoration Team

An early step in developing a monitoring program is to develop and review your restoration objectives and proposed management. Ideally, this should be done with a broadly representative advisory group that meets regularly. Everyone who interacts with the site should be encouraged to participate in this continuous process. The advantage of this approach is its broad base: considering all concerns will enable the team to review as many potential strategies and outcomes as possible.

In defining your objectives, be as explicit as possible: identify the expected results of management and refine them as your project proceeds, so that your assumptions can be compared later with the actual changes that occur in the landscape and vegetation. Learning when our expectations are incorrect helps to ensure that we learn as much as possible from both mistakes and successes.

Volunteers can implement many of the actions described in this book if they start small, have adequate supervision, and monitor with care. But you will probably want assistance in designing a monitoring program, and you may want to implement actions that require specialized expertise. Your success in large measure will depend upon the breadth of experience and creativity of the people you are able to bring to bear on the problems at hand. Much specialized knowledge is almost certain to be necessary, including engineering, horticulture, botany, zoology, and soils science. When the situation warrants, you should obtain professional advice.

But finding good advisors can be hard, especially in a new field like ecological restoration, and especially for a grassroots organization, a grammar school, or an underfunded agency. You really can’t expect one individual to know all you need; you’ll need to assemble a team. If you are just starting out, the most effective way to find the right expertise is probably to go to conferences with a restoration theme and meet people face to face, listen to their approaches and findings, and ask questions about shared problems. More than likely, either they or someone they know will have the background you need.

Try to seek out local scientists in area institutions who have an interest in related fields and who might become involved in your restoration. Local schools are ideal for monitoring efforts because they can serve as public repositories of information that in turn can contribute greatly to both the academic curriculum and the community knowledge base. Sometimes all it takes is a mini-grant to make it possible for a class to pay the limited expenses necessary to initiate a special project on your site.

In the Northeast you can get a very broad education by attending the region’s many conferences and workshops. Consider a regional meeting of a national or international organization as well as local conferences that may be geared to your specific region and landscape type. Contact your local nature center, your state’s chapter of The Nature Conservancy, your state’s native plant society, or the Society for Ecological Restoration, and you will soon be well informed about conference and workshop opportunities. If you go to a few sessions, you will likely end up on restoration-related mailing lists, which will help you find scientists and other individuals who are already focused on restoration.

As you become more involved in your restoration project, you will also likely become aware of monitoring projects already under way in your community. The state of New Jersey is using 180 specially trained volunteer census takers to complete the New Jersey Herptile Atlas documenting seventy-two species of frogs, turtles, lizards, salamanders, and snakes. The Nature Conservancy is monitoring butterfly populations through the Butterfly Monitoring Network. To learn about existing programs, call your local chapter of the Nature Conservancy and other local environmental organizations.

The following discussion offers guidelines for a monitoring program that those who are managing the landscape develop incrementally. It is intended to give an overview and to help you coordinate with local specialists, schools, agencies, and institutions.

The Site Database and Management Log

The site database and management log are a continuous inventory of the environmental factors of the site and a record of all site interventions. They may include, but are not limited to, the following:

 

• Systematic photographic log with accompanying narrative descriptions.

A photographic record is important not only because it captures the site’s character, but also because it records many things that are not otherwise intentionally documented. A picture is literally worth a thousand words, especially if it is actually a series of photographs of the same locations taken at regular intervals over time. The accompanying narrative augments the photographic record and provides for additional anecdotal comment. There are many ways to keep these records, from digital photography to snapshots pasted in a looseleaf binder. One of the simplest methods is to make a videotape log with verbal narrative at the time of the periodic review.

 

• Research

In most instances, direction on how best to document a site may come from the past. You will therefore need to do some research, comparing what persists on the site today with historic data such as plant lists, photographs, and trees identified in early surveys and used as markers, as well as deeds, herbarium specimens, and studies. Your local historical society may be a good place to start. Even a small advertisement in a local newspaper asking for historic landscape information may yield fruitful results.

Look for information at varying scales. Area agencies and organizations have a surprising array of information for the restoration-minded. If you are in Brooklyn, for example, you might start with the Native Species Planting Guide for New York City and Vicinity, prepared by the Natural Resources Group of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (Luttenberg, Lev, and Feller 1993), which describes local plant communities. At the next scale you might want to look at Ecological Communities of New York State, published by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Natural Heritage Program (Reschke 1990). At a far larger scale, the Landscape Restoration Handbook (Harker et al. 1993), produced in collaboration with the New York Audubon Society, describes the landscape communities of the entire United States.

 

• Baseline monitoring

A baseline study records current conditions of the landscape for comparison with both past and future site conditions as well as with other sites. It is literally the basis for ongoing evaluation of change in the landscape, from plant and animal communities, soils and microclimate, to fire patterns. The inventory should include a recent topographic map depicting all natural and made features and information on the geology and soils, surface water and groundwater, and all plants and animals, such as mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, soil microbial communities, and invertebrates. While the usual goal is to complete baseline monitoring for many factors, both biotic and abiotic, and then repeat it regularly, the reality is that a monitoring program is often not instituted all at once but incrementally because of time and financial constraints.

• Periodic site reviews

Both short- and long-term landscape management objectives and the methods used will need to be evaluated and reassessed for each site on a regular basis. Some of these reviews need only be very brief and note only what the general conditions are; any active intervention may have to be postponed until other, higher-priority, areas are dealt with. The central point of these reviews is to ensure that regular strategic planning occurs, not just a quick reaction only when damage has progressed. This process also fosters regular reevaluation of the management approach.

 

• Ongoing site monitoring

Ongoing comparative analysis of information in the baseline and historical records is desirable. The process of expanding and updating information about the site needs to be continuous over time.

 

• Ongoing record of regular maintenance activities and amounts of time spent Include records of trash pickup, weeding and watering, fence repair, tree maintenance, and whatever other activities occur on the site. Simplified forms help limit the time taken away from hands-on site work.

 

• Ongoing records of special-purpose management activities to restore and maintain cultural landscape features such as vistas and gardens, including a description of existing conditions, recommended action and rationale, and actions taken; key this information to your site maps

Many natural areas are part of historic sites, and so their management must be integrated. Preserving both is not mutually exclusive: Restoring historic native communities enhances the authenticity and context of other historic and archaeological restoration efforts.

 

• Ongoing assessment of all management

Follow-up is needed to evaluate actions. In addition to recording what occurred according to your observations, include your recommendations for further action and monitoring.

 

• Site journal

This continuing record of the observations of the restoration team should note daily and seasonal variability, such as blooming schedules, as well as ephemeral, occasional, or unusual events such as a population explosion of a small mammal and migrations. Often the importance of what is recorded is not known until later.

 

Making a habit of documentation combined with inquisitive observation is basic to restoration. All management is an effort to direct succession, so try to see the landscape changing before your eyes. What did the landscape look like ten years ago? What will it look like next year? Ten years from now? Fifty or a hundred years from now? How might the landscape be altered with management? Ask yourself as many questions as possible about the region in general and the relationship of your site to the larger landscape. Ideally, this exercise should be a dialogue engaging a variety of different people who are familiar with the site, a process to inform the monitoring program. Test your observations with other people and other sites. Ask a lot of questions of people, over and over.

Landscape Restoration Models

Where a site has been altered from its historical condition, it is important to identify other landscapes that can serve as suitable and feasible restoration models. Research into historic site conditions on these reference landscapes derived from literature, site analysis, or local residents and users usually serves as a primary source of information for a restoration effort. Historic plant surveys, for example, allow you to perform an invaluable comparison with current conditions.

You may also be able to locate in your region similar but more natural examples of the habitat you are restoring to serve as valuable models for your restoration effort. Look for natural landscapes within your region where ecosystems are like those on your site, places that share similar geology and soils and that occupy similar terrain but are less disturbed than your own site. These landscape restoration models are a source of information not only on soil, vegetation, and wildlife, but also on the larger natural processes that support local biodiversity. A site restoration model also can be used to determine criteria for evaluating the success of management. Monitor the landscapes of the model sites for the same factors you monitor at the restoration site; the records will serve as a source for comparative analysis and a measure of success. Opportunities to compare the more natural area with the restoration site are limitless and range from temperature shifts of the forest floor to invertebrate populations, from appearances of resident and migratory birds to leaf predation, from recruitment patterns to nutrient cycling. It is also very useful to look at similar but more disturbed sites to see likely future problems.

Landscape restoration is not about creating a completely new landscape that is an idealized version of nature, any more than a child can be viewed as a lump of clay to be molded into whatever form we choose. Rather, the object is to optimize the potential for “self design” of the site, the site’s ability to recover and develop by means of its own inherent processes, to allow it to become the highest-quality natural landscape that can be achieved given its condition and the context in which it is set.

For any area there is a wide range of landscape types that might occur over time, as well as many that would not be at all likely. A large, relatively undisturbed site will present a very different range of options than a narrow corridor in a developed landscape fabric would, no matter how similar their original conditions. The wider the deviation of the desired outcome from the intrinsic conditions of the site, the greater the chance for failure. For example, a created wetland in an upland landscape is far less likely to be supported by an appropriate hydrologic regime, despite creative engineering, than a wetland reestablished in its former setting.

For the North Woods restoration in Central Park, the natural landscape that defines the nature of the project is the band of oak forest that begins on the granite highlands at the north end of the park and extends into upstate New York and New England. The site in Central Park is one end of a gradient of wildness that ranges from this island of forest in an urban area to less heavily disturbed wildlands hundreds of miles from the city. Central Park is part of this landscape, and its central management themes recur in more natural areas throughout the region because the factors that threaten the larger ecosystem are magnified in the city but also pervade the entire matrix.

Those working in Central Park are studying regional natural areas that share conditions similar to those found in the park to gain perspective on what can be accomplished and what species should be considered. One site, Saxon Woods, off the Hutchison Parkway, is subjected to less air pollution, is somewhat older, and has been less disturbed by trampling and vehicles. It is a good model for what we can aspire to if we reduce the level of disturbance in Central Park. In addition to studying this and other sites, the managers are reconstructing the historic record in an effort to ensure that propagules of species most representative of the ecosystem are available on their site. The objective is to provide opportunities for self-design of this site by ensuring the presence of all the species that would be there if the site had not been isolated from the larger systems.

In Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, managers are using local soils to determine the reference ecosystem or model that would help define what plant species are most suited to the site. Plants communities are very closely linked to the subtle differences in soil types in a given area. Even where the more specialized vegetation of the past has been largely eradicated, the remnant soils can help determine appropriate new plantings.

The northern end of Prospect Park occupies the Harbor Hill Moraine, the terminal moraine of the Wisconsin Glacier about 18,000 years ago. The flatter southern portion of the park sits on the edge of the outwash plain of the glacier. Despite significant modification to the soils by grading, the soils in these parts of the park still express their past composition: the hilly northern sections still consist of a boulder-strewn stony loam, while the coastal plain soils of the southern areas are largely remnant sandy and silty loams. To restore vegetation, the managers have developed two separate lists of recommended plant species that reflect the differences between these historic landscape types.

Some sites are so disturbed that a completely different habitat than the previous condition may be more appropriate. For example, the Freshkills Landfill on Staten Island, New York, rises hundreds of feet above what once was tidal wetlands that are unlikely to be restored, at least in the near future. It would have been difficult, to say the least, to establish largely native grasslands and young woodlands that would in time succeed to forest. A well-managed native meadow may be a better interim step on a journey to mature forest than skipping all early-successional steps and reintroducing mature-forest species in the site’s highly modified soils.

The best approach is to learn everything you can about the site’s former role in the landscape. Beware of the microcosm approach in setting your restoration goals — that is, avoid trying to miniaturize the larger landscape and to represent the entire ecosystem on a single site. Each and every site has an inherent role based on its place in the terrain and its relationship to the larger ecological context. A mini-region might be a reasonable goal for an arboretum exhibit, but most sites need to again fill their historic roles, as a floodplain forest or tidal meadow, for instance. A stream valley is more important as a piece of the larger hydrologic system than as a place to create all of the habitats of a region. The goal is to reweave whole cloth, by stitching the patches together.

A restoration project may begin as a specific site, such as a park, but the focus and context always need to include the larger ecosystem. The most appropriate management area may not necessarily conform to property lines or political boundaries. Therefore, try to keep records both of your project area as well as the larger, once-whole system. Today, what is left of a forested stream valley may be part of a patchwork of properties in varying levels of naturalness, each offering different opportunities and constraints, or it may be confined to a narrow strip of park in an otherwise totally urbanized setting. Think of the initial site as your foot in the door to the restoration of an ecosystem. As the authors of Restoring Diversity: Strategies for Reintroduction of Endangered Plants (Falk, Millar, and Olwell 1996) note in their Introduction, “[W]e suggest that the restorationist’s view must be simultaneously on the big picture and the small, on the grand design and the fine details.”

Damage Control and Periodic Site Reviews

One of the first tasks of management should be to arrest damage so that no more ground is lost. The restoration team must determine priorities. Just as one purpose of long-term monitoring is to notice impacts and trends that might otherwise go unobserved in the short term, a purpose of a periodic review is to notice those more sudden changes and new impacts that require timely action. One of the first actions taken by the restoration team in Prospect Park was a detailed map of soil disturbance (Figure 21.1).

To be effective, the site review team should consist of people who have been a part of the regular review process to ensure continuity as well as a few fresh faces added occasionally to bring new ideas and perceptions to the project.

In conducting periodic site reviews, paying attention to first impressions is essential. What has changed since the last inspection? Have site conditions improved or worsened? If so, why? How do conditions on the site today compare with those recorded in the last set of photographs and comments?

While damage control is the first priority, you should also notice areas of richness that might not have been observed previously and are inadequately protected. Even where the site appears undisturbed, evaluating the existing level of protection and establishing an adequate review schedule are still important.

Often the restoration team must establish priorities to do the most good with often-limited resources. One way to do this at the outset of a project or where the level of impact seems overwhelming is to categorize the sites as stable, declining, or degraded. This step will help ensure that the most valuable habitats are given the best protection and that further damage is effectively contained.

The specific conditions for these criteria will vary with each landscape, but often, as a first step, you can briefly map just the most serious impacts, such as the presence of exotics, erosion, bare soil, or deer browse, to provide a quick overview of the site’s status. If you are especially concerned about exotics, for example, stable habitats might include those areas that are largely native. Declining areas would have native species present but exotics reproducing more vigorously, and degraded areas might be largely exotic. These terms are of course relative. In the North Woods Project in Central Park, where almost no stable, largely native patches existed, a more important distinction was between those areas in the early versus late stages of decline.

In stable areas, typically the most important goal is to prevent to the extent possible any future damage by means of management. In some cases, however, management in declining sites usually centers on fostering remaining native species and reducing ongoing stresses. A degraded site may have no native elements to rescue or sustain. There the goal might initially be to ensure no further expansion of the invasive plant without actually attempting to eradicate it. A priority of management would be to prevent that area from serving as a source of infestation to surrounding landscapes.

The condition of the ground is another useful measure of current stresses, which may include drainage problems as well as use. Look for overt impacts such as dumping or trampling.

The next step is to develop a protection program for those areas that are declining. The site team must identify crucial actions to take to curb damage and to initiate repair on the site. You also must try to identify the source of the damage as well as the full extent of the area of impact, both of which may extend beyond the project’s boundaries. Stormwater damage, for instance, usually crosses many boundaries and jurisdictions. An invasive exotic might be a more localized problem or of regional significance.

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Figure 21.1. The staff at Prospect Park undertook detailed mapping of existing ground conditions to document the extent of erosion and trampling damage for a comprehensive restoration plan. Note that the steep slopes may be readily discerned.

Some Considerations in Monitoring

Instead of describing the many monitoring options and techniques, this section focuses on the objectives of monitoring and the kinds of questions that may arise. In the course of monitoring you will be documenting many specific factors in the landscape, but the primary goal is to better understand the place as a system embedded within a larger system.

The Watershed

All issues related to water in your landscape will also relate to the larger watershed and sub-watersheds of your site. You will be able to obtain a significant amount of information from federal, state, and local agencies for your area, as well as your local watershed association, to develop a detailed survey of the watersheds in your landscape.

In the Wissahickon Watershed Stewardship Program in Philadelphia, volunteer local stewards are designated for each sub-watershed of Wissahickon Park. The volunteers are preparing detailed maps of the watershed identifying drainage conditions throughout the landscape as well as areas of severe erosion, debris and dumping, and a variety of other factors related to water management. In addition, they have developed a photographic manual including examples of every condition they are documenting as well as different levels of severity to ensure consistent and accurate mapping.

The Ground

Review available soil data where available, beginning with your county’s soil survey, which you can obtain from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, formerly called the Soil Conservation Service. In urban areas labeled “made land,” your prospects for good soil are poor and you will have no real information about specific site conditions. In metropolitan areas, where the landscape is typically a fragmented patchwork of relatively undisturbed to highly degraded areas, vegetation may give you important clues to the relative naturalness of the soil. For instance, remnant native plant communities are likely to be associated with remnant patches of less-disturbed native soil profiles, where there has been minimal grading, filling, plowing, liming, or fertilization. Compare your present soils and associated vegetation to native soils in the region’s less-disturbed areas, evaluating how they are different or similar to historical soil conditions.

In cities like Philadelphia, where strict fire codes meant stone and masonry construction, there is often enough lime from residual mortar in soils to elevate the pH above historical levels. Rather than moderately acid, like the native soils in most of the surrounding area, the soils in many places in Philadelphia’s small parks are circumneutral — that is, neither acid nor alkaline — good for lawn but not for native forest communities, which are associated with acid soils. Consider requesting complete soil mapping for your site if all of it is presently labeled as made land. Information on soils and parent material will be one of the best indicators of appropriate planting strategies.

Soil monitoring today typically analyzes physical parameters such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, moisture, heavy metals, chlorination, and other hydrocarbons. For standard agricultural soil tests contact your state land-grant college of agriculture or your county extension service of the Natural Resource Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The soil’s living components such as mycorrhizae and other fungi and soil flora, gastropods and invertebrates, arthropods, and nematodes and soil macrofauna are equally important in restoration as the soil’s physical parameters, but less commonly documented because the techniques for measuring them are still new. Look for researchers specializing in soil food webs in your region. One company, Soil Foodweb, Inc., for example, provides assays of soil and compost microbiota including active and total fungi and bacteria, as well as protozoa and nematodes. An interpretation of the results is available. For information, contact Soil Foodweb Inc., 980 N.W. Circle Boulevard, Corvallis, OR 97330, 541-752-5066.

The status of the soil microbial community is a good indicator of the status of the larger landscape system. Research has demonstrated that measurements of soil microbial activity can be used to evaluate the levels of both ecosystem damage and recovery. Three characteristics are crucial to this assessment: the amount of biomass, the rate of turnover of organic materials, and the level of biodiversity in the system. All three factors are very low in a highly disturbed site (Harris and Hill 1995; Bentham et al. 1992).

Jim Harris and Tom Hill (1995) measure both biotic and abiotic factors in assessing the status of soil microbes. Using the levels of enzyme activity of living creatures, they assess total biomass and total microbial activity. They then determine the proportion of fungal biomass. These measurements, when combined with total nitrogen, soil organic carbon, the ratio of carbon to nitrogen, and the ratio of microbial biomass carbon to organic carbon, give scientists a clear picture of the status of soil communities and system dynamics. While these sophisticated tests are not yet widely available to restorationists, it is important to be aware of what kind of information you may ultimately want to obtain. For those who wish to know more about microbial succession as well as restoration in general, see Land Restoration and Reclamation: Principles and Practice by James Harris, Paul Birch, and John Palmer (1996), published by Addison Wesley Longman Ltd., Longman House, Burnt Hill, Harlow, Essex CM20 2JE, England.

Sometimes you will not have all the relevant data you need or want in order to make decisions. Even when specific expertise is not available to you, consider an interim solution like mapping all fungal fruiting bodies, such as mushrooms and puffballs, that appear in the landscape by making a photographic record. At some later time, it will provide valuable data for analysis. Map all rotten logs and woody debris that might determine areas where additional management to favor soil microorganisms would be useful. Jim Harris pointed out another method at a conference: you can take soil cores now and dry and store them for analysis when funds become available.

Vegetation

One of the most useful activities anyone can engage in is to make a vegetation map of the site. This usually is a very revelatory process that familiarizes the participants with the site’s conditions. The most important task is determining what vegetation types to map. Unfortunately, no federal agency has comprehensively mapped plant community types in the United States as the Soil Conservation Service did in its nationwide soil mapping program. The information available on vegetation is variable and in many instances may be little more than the extent of woodland that is plotted on USGS quad sheets and wetlands maps from the National Wetlands Inventory.

The most useful vegetation mapping is probably of plant associations, or plant communities. A “plant association” consists of species that are frequently found together under similar environmental conditions as well as in roughly the same population proportions. They are usually described briefly by the names of the most common species in the order of their predominance, such as an oak-hickory forest or a beech-maple forest. Because vegetation is a reflection of many site factors, mapping plant association types can also reveal important information about soil types, drainage conditions, and potential animal habitat.

This type of mapping is usually done by delineating areas of apparently similar vegetation on aerial photographs and then verifying the “signature” of that type in the field. Different vegetation communities have subtly different textures and characters on an aerial photograph that are recognizable to a trained interpreter. Different kinds of photography, such as true and false color, different scales, and the season or hour of the overflight permit different levels of refinement. Some vegetation types are more readily discerned than other kinds. For a large site, “Global Positioning Systems” are invaluable, but a small site with many identifiable site features can be mapped entirely on the ground. Wherever plant-community-type mapping has been done in the past it offers an exceptional opportunity for comparison with new mapping to see what changes have occurred.

In less-disturbed forests, consider mapping the ground-layer vegetation, especially the herbaceous layer, which is the most vulnerable, so you can identify and protect areas of biotic richness as quickly as possible and get an overview of the general level of variability within the landscape. Sue Bratton and Albert Meier (in press), who research forest succession, propose a procedure for determining which native ground-layer species are likely to need additional propagation and reintroduction based on current levels of recruitment success. They suggest that the ground-layer plants that merit special attention include mesic species, species dependent on gaps for recruitment, plants dependent on another species that has been extirpated, and species that have narrow microhabitat preferences, require deep organic soils, disperse or grow slowly, or have only small and scattered populations. You will need to sample in both spring and fall to adequately survey ephemeral plants..

In more degraded landscapes, there may be little correlation between existing plants and where they would occur naturally. In Central Park, for example, the legacy of past plantings bore no relation to where a plant would occur naturally even when native species were planted. The baseline vegetation mapping documented current conditions but did not reveal much about the landscape’s intrinsic suitability for native species because there was little rationale to the pattern of vegetation. The goal of mapping was simply to record what was there for comparison in the future. The park and conservancy staff developed two types of maps: one recording the major canopy vegetation, the other recording the ground layer, including both herbaceous species and woody seedlings, as well as levels of soil disturbance. All canopy trees over 6 inches in diameter were located on a grid map of the site to document those trees over time. The trees also serve as reference points for recording locations of planting and other management activities in the management log and site database.

In addition to vegetation mapping, the most common tools used in baseline monitoring are “transects” and “plots.” Site transects are especially useful for assessing and documenting vegetation at a large scale when a broad overview is needed. Sampling plots usually serve to give a more detailed picture at a smaller scale. A transect is an imaginary line marked out on the landscape, along which the occurrence of plants or any other factor can be counted, such as all woody stems that are on the line or every plant that occurs within a set distance from the line at certain points. Often very detailed sampling of a small area, called a “quadrat,” is taken at either random or regular intervals along the transect. The metric system is usually used for scientific sampling, so a quadrat might be 1 square meter. Where the research focus is narrow, the transects might be determined randomly, but in the highly variable and often-patchy quality of the real landscape today, setting the transects intentionally is often advisable to ensure that the transects intersect all habitats and different site conditions. Research and documentation do not necessarily have the same goals or exactly the same requirements, so also consider taking photos along the set of transects or plots you develop and keep a continuous photographic log of these cross sections of your landscape.

Sampling plots are designated smaller areas within the larger landscape in which you count frequencies of plants or take other measurements to indicate conditions in the larger system. Like transects, sampling plots are not necessarily located randomly in an evaluation of a restoration effort. Quadrats are usually located randomly within a plot.

You can also use plots and transects to assess specific stress factors. You can assess deer browse or the amount of defoliation by gypsy moths that season, for example, in different parts of the landscape or from season to season. Or you can evaluate the relative density of understory stems that are crossed by branches or leaves.

You can vary the scale of both plots and transects to fit the scale of the site. In Louisville, Kentucky, for example, a local scientist is assessing the effectiveness of ongoing management in several parks designed by Olmsted by using plots at multiple scales sited intentionally throughout the parks. The plots range in scale from large sites (one-twentieth of an acre) for counting all woody stems to smaller sites (one-fiftieth of an acre) for counting small shrubs and vines, to even smaller sites (6 feet by 6 feet) for counting herbaceous plants and calculating the percentage of the ground that they cover. Together, those scales will portray both the larger character and smaller details of the parks’ landscapes.

An exclosure, as described in Chapter 24, “Planting,” is a fenced-off site. Used as a specialized sampling plot, it helps determine the impact of a factor by excluding it from a portion of the landscape. The fenced-off restoration sites in Central Park, for example, reveal how much will grow simply by excluding human foot traffic; they are not unlike deer exclosures in the countryside. An exclosure is an excellent tool for revealing new aspects of your site’s plants and processes that were obscured by continuing damage.

Floyd Swink and Gerould Wilhelm (1994), botanists at the Morton Arboretum, developed a method for assessing the quality of plant communities that is based on what they call an “index of conservatism.” The index of conservation measures what proportion of the species present in the landscape are conservative species, rather than generalists and opportunists. The process is rather simple in concept and begins with gathering the best area botanists and ecologists to evaluate each individual plant species based on their knowledge of its requirements and associates. They then assign a value, called a “coefficient of conservatism” to each species, based on the extent to which that plant is adapted to specialized habitats. A weedy plant found everywhere has a very low value while a highly specialized plant has a very high value. A combined value, called the “floristic quality assessment” or “index” is then assigned to a given landscape site based on the values of all the native species present. No re-created landscape scored higher than 35 in their study. A score of 45 or higher almost certainly indicates a site with natural reserve area potential. A landscape with an even higher value merits the greatest protection.

Determining the relative conservatism of species is vital in order to prioritize restoration efforts. The approach can also be used as the standard of a restoration’s success and so can shape your entire restoration program. It has been used, for example, to restore tallgrass prairies, and the state of Michigan has recently completed a floristic quality assessment (Herman et al. 1997).

An interesting aspect of the method is that it is based on the quality of remaining communities without regard to the presence or absence of exotics. This way of valuing a landscape is rooted in the recognition that once a specialized landscape is disturbed, its biotic integrity is obliterated forever, as if it were an extinct species.

Wildlife

Baseline surveys of existing wildlife often begin with birds because of the extraordinary numbers of skilled amateur birdwatchers in many communities and the degree of organization, leadership, and documentation provided by the Audubon Society, including its annual Christmas bird counts and breeding bird surveys. Surveys of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, however, usually require the assistance of specialists as well as permits from state and federal wildlife agencies in many cases because the animals are often trapped for census taking. You may find it helpful to contact local organizations to learn about ongoing wildlife studies that may apply to your own project.

Many techniques that do not require the handling of live animals, such as counting footprints or roadkill surveys, also can be extremely useful sources of data. You can regularly review what tracks are made on a freshly raked patch of ground. Sometimes a scent lure such as urine or a visual lure, such as a suspended, shiny disk, is helpful. Specific approaches vary with species. Frog counting is often done by ear because most calls are easily distinguishable. You can often get a good deer census in an area with an aerial photograph or overflight after a fresh snow, when they stand out clearly. Another useful approach is to survey the landscape for habitat elements that benefit selected wildlife, such as dead trees, called snags, and fallen logs, vernal pools, and other seasonal wetlands.

The succession of animals, even very small ones, proceeds in concert with plant succession; therefore invertebrate population surveys provide special opportunities for monitoring the success of restoration efforts. Microbial invertebrate communities in soils give a better reading on the successional status of a forest restoration than the more obvious features of gross vegetation, since they are representative of a tremendous diversity of species that play an extraordinary array of different roles critical to ecosystem function, including detritivores, predators, and prey. Success in reestablishing rich insect communities, for example, suggests that many other natural functions have been restored along with the more visible elements of vegetation. Such methods, however, require real expertise, not always available to a land manager. If expert help is not available, pay attention to the most obvious elements, which are the plants and the habitat’s characteristics.

It is also important to recognize that animals, like plants, also have different levels of conservatism. Ron Panzer of Northeastern Illinois University noted that about 25 percent of local insect species are missing or absent from degraded landscapes (Panzer 1995). He calls these species “remnant-reliant” — that is, their survival depends on existing relict populations. Remnant-reliant insects often depend on conservative plants, unlike remnant-independent species, which are less exacting in their requirements.

Kathy Williams (1993) of San Diego State University devised a program to compare arthropods from a restored riparian woodland to populations in adjacent natural wetlands. The restored site was intended as habitat for the endangered least Bell’s vireo, but no pairs had returned after the first three years. Nevertheless, her monitoring of arthropods showed rapid establishment of most of the common insects, although their population ratios were different from those in the natural area that served as the model. The re-created landscape had far fewer larger insects compared to the natural one. When the planted landscape matures, the trees are taller, and the landscape structure is modified, however, the numbers of large insects will increase and food sources may then be adequate to support the vireos.

Arthropod monitoring also revealed information that will be useful for future restorations in the area intended to benefit least Bell’s vireos, such as what species supplied the most abundant food sources. In Europe, monitoring the status of land snails has been a useful indicator of the restoration of natural associates, especially in limestone landscapes. Different species favor woodland conditions, that is, greater than 50 percent closed canopy, and others favor earlier successional stages (Magnin and Tatoni 1995).

As noted earlier, Susan Bratton and Albert Meier (in press) suggest that in the eastern forest we should focus on salamanders as indicators of the conservation of native species and as standards for evaluating the success of wildlife preservation and restoration efforts. There are dozens of species of salamanders and reptiles in the eastern forest and even greater diversity at the subspecies level. Despite the occurrence of up to six species in a single square yard under undisturbed conditions, their return to a cleared landscape may easily take a century or more, making them excellent indicators of both forest quality as well as recovery. Despite the scientific controversy over how quantifiable the use of species as indicators is, each landscape has some species of special concern that help to reveal the status of the larger system. In Pennsylvania, for example, the regal fritillary, a once-common butterfly, has suddenly all but disappeared for reasons that are not fully understood, raising serious concerns about the future of many other species.

Although there is a tendency to overstate the conclusions that can be drawn from the monitoring of indicator species, selective documentation of specific elements of the system as a gauge of the larger system is very useful. Consider focusing on species or a group of species whose success may relate to another species or group of species, such as ants, which are seed dispersers of many woodland ephemerals.

Monitoring Altered Succession

The restoration of an oak-hickory forest being undertaken at the Brecksville Nature Center demonstrates the way a management strategy based upon altered succession is defined, monitored, and evaluated. The site in question lies about thirteen and a half miles south of the city of Cleveland and is part of the Metroparks system. Until the 1920s the land was in agriculture and now supports an even-aged oak woodland, a canopy so dense that only sugar maple and beech reproduce beneath it. The historic landscape supported maple and beech on the side slopes, but the hilltops were oak-hickory, the forest that the park managers want to restore and sustain. The regrowth of the oaks after agriculture produced an even-aged condition that was not typical of these forests historically. This condition, in turn, led to three significant changes in the population dynamics of the habitat: a decline of understory and ground-layer species, a decline in overall tree growth, and the invasion of beech and maple. The management plan that the Brecksville Nature Center developed included five major strategies:

1) monitoring of species presence and their vigor, 2) prescribed burning with a ground fire during the unleaved condition, 3) cutting of Beech and Sugar Maple that are too large to be damaged by the burning, 4) cutting of some oaks to open up the canopy and 5) planting of seed from local ecotypes (Smith 1990, 108).

In addition, the managers determined four goals for evaluating the success of the project:

1) seventy-five per cent of the species listed will set seed at least once out of three years and produce offspring at least once in every five years, 2) Beech and Sugar Maple will produce seedlings less than once in ten years, and will be less than 15 per cent of the total basal area, 3) White Oak and Shagbark Hickory will produce seedlings more than once every fifteen years, and 4) non-native species will be less than ten per cent of the total above ground stems (ibid.).

These goals define clear objectives whether or not they are achievable with the current management. They set specific parameters for assessing and — more important — modifying the strategies based on what occurs. The standard of measure is the landscape and what happens on the ground.

The managers in Central Park are evaluating how best to manage successional change along the Loch, the stream in the North Woods. The old willows that once lined parts of the channel have died and fallen over and apart in place. At first the landscape looked somewhat trashed, but quite soon it attracted a wide diversity of birds. For a while the gaps were rich in new plant species as well — that is, until the young ash trees took hold and started to grow apace. Now the questions are not about removing exotics but whether or not to remove natives, albeit very common species, to sustain these special places. The answers will be found only by setting clear objectives, monitoring outcomes, and then refining strategies. Ultimately, all of our efforts will matter to the extent that the landscape recovers. Monitoring is the crucial tool that brings the details of the real landscape into focus.