The Santa Cruz Long Term Forest Stewardship Monitoring Program provides tools and best practices for California Central Coast land managers, researchers, and practitioners to collect consistent, high-quality forest monitoring data over time. The program currently provides a standardized intensive monitoring protocol and companion Survey123 data collection interface that can optionally be submitted to a regional forest change monitoring database to support region-wide research efforts. In the future, a “rapid” version of the protocol and a number of companion resources will also be available. While the resources are tailored to California Central Coast forest systems, it is broadly applicable across western US forest systems.
Protocols, Materials, and Datasheets
Intensive Forest Stewardship Monitoring Protocol (Beta Version)
Office and Field Guide for Permanent Plot Demarcation
Plot Distribution Methods and Best Practices for Long Term Monitoring
Paper Datasheets
Monitoring Gear Share
To promote the standardized implementation of forest monitoring across stewardship projects in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a gear share that includes many forestry and ecological tools needed to implement our forest monitoring protocol is available for eligible organizations and academic faculty and students. Gear share is available to those entities located or working in the Santa Cruz Mountains contributing to our goals of the collecting publicly available forest monitoring data (lengthy data embargoes are allowed). A deposit may be required and no guarantees on gear availability are made. Reach out to Brian Woodward for more details and an available gear list.
2025 Forest Monitoring Workshop
In February 2025, nearly 40 project partners and collaborators convened to establish core needs of a standardized forest monitoring protocol to be implemented throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains. Once finalized, all protocols, datasheets, and monitoring guides will be made available below for use across the coast redwood range. Expect draft materials to be posted following the 2025 Field Monitoring season (ETA: October 2025)