(1) The department shall field review a subset of forest management activities
after project completion, or every five years for ongoing projects, to evaluate
the application of biological diversity measures at a stand and landscape
level.
(2) The department shall check landscape
evaluations to compare actual effects of management activities and natural
processes against desired or predicted effects to the extent practicable.
(3) The department shall evaluate trends in:
(a) forest cover characteristics;
(b) habitat values;
(c) insect and disease activity; and
(d) other natural disturbances.
(4) The department shall complete biodiversity field reviews. The reviews shall focus on:
(a) general landscape and stand level considerations;
(b) implementation of the coarse filter;
(c) emulations of natural processes and disturbance regimes in treatment selection;
(d) threatened and endangered species; and
(e) other such considerations.
(5) The department shall summarize biodiversity field reviews in a monitoring report to
the state board of land commissioners every five years.
(6) The
department shall quantify forest cover conditions, including cover types and
age class distributions, annually at the unit level using data from the
department's forest management bureau's stand level inventory system. Every
five years the reports shall be submitted as part of the monitoring report to
the state board of land commissioners.
(7) Results of monitoring
shall be used to help plan follow-up and future activities in the evaluation
area, and to improve the department's ability to predict the effects of
activities in similar situations elsewhere. Monitoring shall be frequent
enough to accomplish these purposes effectively.