HOW WAS THIS MONITORING PROTOCOL REVIEWED AND PILOT TESTED?
The Forest Service Wilderness Monitoring Committee adopted a two-phase review strategy for the national Framework. The purpose of the first review, conducted in the Fall of 2002, was to solicit comments from a relatively small group of individuals intimately familiar with wilderness and its management. Responses were received from 34 individuals: 13 from Forest Service personnel; ten from academic, federal agency, and non-governmental organization scientists; seven from National Park Service personnel; three from Fish and Wildlife Service personnel; and one from the Bureau of Land Management. Three Committee members individually reviewed all responses to ensure that a particular concern or nuance of a concern wouldn't be missed if just one person reviewed the responses. All together, approximately 420 person-hours were spent reviewing and discussing these comments. Personal responses were sent to each reviewer with the decision of how the Committee would address each of their comments.
The purpose of the second review was to solicit comments from across the entire Forest Service, including all staff areas in National Forest Systems and Forest Service Research & Development, and from other Federal wilderness management agencies. In the Summer of 2004 a formal letter from the Forest Service Director of Recreation, Heritage, and Wilderness Resources was sent across the Forest Service and to the other agencies requesting this review. A total of nine comments were received from this solicitation, six from Forest Service personnel, two from National Park Service personnel, and one from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
In addition to these formal reviews, many informal reviews and discussions took place over the course of developing this Framework. Both formal and informal reviews and discussions greatly helped the Committee craft the final concepts presented in this Framework.
This monitoring was extensively piloted tested, with a pilot test in each Forest Service region, yielding a total of nine pilot tests. Pilot test sites were identified through the use of criteria developed to ensure the protocol was subjected to real-world conditions representative of the wide complexity of wildernesses across the nation (see the link below for a table of the pilot test sites and the criteria used to select them).
The pilot tests were designed to accomplish several goals:
- For the Technical Guide:
- Assess organization, functionality, and readability;
- Assess if the indicators and measures are necessary and sufficient to assess changes in wilderness character;
- Validate assumptions about data availability and other assumptions and decisions made by the Technical Guide Development Team
- Validate test analytical procedures and routines
- Assess the content and organization of the Infra-WILD Wilderness Character module used to input, store, and analyze data
- Assess the functionality of the Infra-WILD Wilderness Character module to access data sets, QA/QC, and analysis procedures
- Assess workload impacts and skills needed for both centralized and field staff
Pilot testing was conducted in two phases:
- Phase I - test the protocol on four wildernesses (La Madre Mountain, Dugger, Alpine Lakes, Kootznowoo) with national protocol support staff present [January 2006 - April 2006];
- Phase II - test the protocol on the remaining five wildernesses (Selway-Bitterroot, Raggeds, Superstition, San Gorgonio, Round Island) without the presence of national support staff to provide a more realistic appraisal of the monitoring protocol [May 2006 - June 2006].
All comments from pilot testing were reviewed at the end of July 2006, and decisions were made regarding the Technical Guide and the Infra-WILD module based on test results. The Technical Guide will be completed by the end of November 2006.
For more information, please see the following:
Wilderness Character Monitoring:
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