Progress 07/01/12 to 06/30/15

Outputs
Target Audience:During this reporting period, we published a peer-reviewed paper in Ecology and Society, a journal that reaches a broad audience of natural resource and resilience scholars. We also shared the paper with our collaborators at The Nature Conservancy, who then shared the paper with their broader Fire Learning Network. In addition, we began to share findings on a subsequent stage of this project, focus on learning through implementation of the Forest Service's new planning rule, specifically the provisions on wildlife conservation planning, with members of the Federal Advisory Committee on forest planning and other interested staff with the Wildlife, Fish, and Rare Plants group at the USDA Forest Service's Washington Office. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two graudate students have received training in conducting research, writing publications, and conducting outreach under this project; one graduate in Summer 2015 and the other will graduate Spring of 2016. With leveraged funding, an additional 3 Ph.D. students were part of this work, and one undergraduate student conducted his honor's thesis research in coordination with this project and was a co-author on two of our publications. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Results of this project have been shared through two symposia at the ISSRM conference in 2013, through a CFRLP researchers network, which includes agency personnel and other academic colleagues, three peer-reviewed publications, one book chapter, and one white paper. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? In 2012 we published our first piece on the CFLRP under this project (building off of previous McIntire-Stennis funding. The citation is as follows: Schultz, C., Coelho, D., and Beam. R. 2014. The design and governance of multi-party monitoring under the U.S. Forest Service's Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. Journal of Forestry 112: 198-206. This established my lab as a leading source of information on the CFLRP program. The paper has since been cited multiple times and in every subsequent piece on the CFLRP program. We organized a network (still-active) of CFLRP researchers and co-hosted with Dr. Will Butler from the University of Florida two symposia at the 2013 ISSRM conference on the CFLRP. We subsequently published three additional pieces on this program: 1) Schultz, C., Coelho, D., and Beam. R. 2014. The design and governance of multi-party monitoring under the U.S. Forest Service's Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. Journal of Forestry 112: 198-206; 2) Coelho, D., Wurtzebach, Z., and Schultz, C. 2013. Adaptive management in Egan, D. and T. Dubay, eds. Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Handbook, pp. 163-190. Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ; and 3) Schultz, C. and Coelho, D. 2012. The design and governance of multi-party monitoring under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program: Preliminary Report. Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO. For the second and third publications we leveraged approximately $12,000 in grants. These publications provided training to three graduate and one undergraduate students A new graduate student, Andrew Spencer, then began a new aspect of this project on the Fire Learning Network's Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges. These specifically allow for cross-jurisdictional prescribed fire application on CFLRP and other forest restoration projects. He completed interviews with ~45 individuals and a survey of over 400 participants. In 2015 he graduated with his MS and obtained employment with the Forest Service. Our paper was also published: Spencer, A.G., C.A. Schultz, and C.M. Hoffman. 2015. Enhancing adaptive capacity for restoring fire-adapted ecosystems: the Fire Learning Networks' Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges. Ecology and Society 20(3):38. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss3/art38/. For the final year of the project, student Summer Grimes chose to examine policy learning and implementation under the Forest Service's new planning rule. She will graduate Spring 2016 and is preparing a publication for submission. This funding allowed my lab to establish itself as a premiere center for research on the policies surrounding forest restoration on public lands. This positioned Dr. Schultz as PI to receive a $210,000 grant as PI to conduct the congressionally requested third-party review of the Forest Service Integrated Resource Restoration budget pilot. This project has resulted in multiple publications (1 peer-review article published, one in preparation, and 3 white papers); visits to Capitol Hill, the USDA, Forest Service and President's Office of Management and Budget; multiple webinars; and outreach on 20 national forests.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Spencer, A.G., C.A. Schultz, and C.M. Hoffman. 2015. Enhancing adaptive capacity for restoring fire-adapted ecosystems: the Fire Learning Networks Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges. Ecology and Society 20(3):38. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss3/art38/

Progress 10/01/13 to 09/30/14

Outputs
Target Audience: Our primary target audience for fiscal year 2014 were prescribed fire professionals, fire educators, and participants in collaborative forest restoration projects. My student Andrew Spencer's M.S. thesis was distributed to fire professionals and educators with the Nature Conservancy and Student Associate for Fire Ecology chapters. His publication is currently in review but has been shared with researchers who work on collaborative forest restoration and planning, fire education, and resiliency theory. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? M.S. student Andrew Spencer received training in both qualitative and quantitative social science data collection for a mixed methods embedded case study research project. He also attended multiple presribed burn training exchanges, acquiring training in the application or prescribed fire and experiential education methods while collecting his data for his MS project. He was hired by the U.S. Forest Service into a Pathways training position that began in March 2014, while he was completing his thesis. Upon successful completion of his graudate degree, this position was converted into a permanent, full-time position for A. Spencer with the U.S. Forest Service. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Yes, the M.S. thesis was shared with prescribed fire trainers through the Fire Learning Network, which received the thesis for distribution and utilized it for community calls with prescribed fire trainers, Fire Learning Network participants, and Nature Conservancy staff. The publication draft has been shared with researchers in the field of natural resource resilience theory. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? During the next reporting period, we plan to have the paper accepted for revision and resubmission to Ecology and Society or another journal if the paper is not accepted. Findings will be presented at the International Symposium on Society and Resource Mangement in Charleston, SC in June 2015. This is an international natural resource social science conference.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? In fiscal year 2014, our publication on the earlier phase of this project, entitled "The Design and Governance of Multiparty Monitoirng under the USDA Forest Service's Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program," was published in Journal of Forestry. Master's of Science (Forestry) student, Andrew Spencer, completed the second phase of this project, graduating in August of 2014. He completed a Master's thesis entitled "Building Capacity and Integrating Training, Education, and Experience: The Fire Learning Network's Prescribed Burn Training Exchanges." This work involved focus groups at four prescribed fire training exchanges around the country and interviews with 13 key informants for a total of 45 participants in focus groups or interviews. Andrew also distributed surveys and had a 75% response rate with 204 completed surveys of past participants in training exchanges. The thesis was distributed to professionals with the Nature Conservancy and others in the world of prescribed fire training. He submitted a publication on this work, integrating concepts from resilience theory, to Ecology and Society in August 2014. The publication is still under review.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: Schultz, C.A., Coelho, D.L., & Beam, R.D. 2014. Design and Governance of Multiparty Monitoring under the USDA Forest Service's Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. Journal of Forestry 112(2): 198-206.
• Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: BUILDING CAPACITY AND INTEGRATING TRAINING, EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE: THE FIRE LEARNING NETWORKS PRESCRIBED BURN TRAINING EXCHANGES
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2014 Citation: Spencer, A. & Schultz, C.A. 2014. Enhancing adaptive capacity for restoring fire-adapted ecosystems: the Fire Learning Networks Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges. Ecology and Society (submitted August 2014).

Progress 01/01/13 to 09/30/13

Outputs
Target Audience: My current graduate student Andrew Spencer (M.S. Plan A) has been participating in the Nature Conservancy/U.S. Forest Service prescribed fire training program and conducting research on the program. Thus far he has provided initial insights to the program designers and shared with them initial survey findings. In 2012 I published a paper on the History of Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) with a former graduate student Theresa Jedd and an undergraduate research assistant, Ryan Beam .We presented this paper at the International Symposium on Society and Resource Management in Estes Park, CO on June 8, 2013, where my colleague Will Butler and I co-organized two symposia on the CFLRP. At the same conference we also presented findings from a paper co-authored with Dana Coelho, a graduate student who was funded under this grant in 2012, and Ryan Beam, who was paid as a research assistant to work on analyzing our interview findings. This paper is currently in review with the Journal of Forestry and discusses our research on the governance and design of the monitoring programs under CFLRP. Ryan Beam also used his work on this project to write his honors thesis which he presented at honors seminars at CSU. We also presented these findings at the Region 2/3 Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program Meeting in Montrose, CO in October 2013. Additionally, we wrote a white paper on our findings about the design of monitoring programs from our first four case studies that was not peer-reviewed (our peer-review publication is currently under review with the Journal of Forestry) and circulated this to partners of the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute and interviewees and partners from the CFLRP case studies . It has gained wide readership among this audience. Finally, I and graduate students Coelho and Wurtzebach contributed a book chapter for the Ecological Restoration Institute's book on the CFLRP. This book was widely circulated to academics, federal agencies partners, and other partners working in collaborative forest restoration. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? The project has supported the work of my current and former graduate students and allowed them to work on publications as well as graduate research degrees. I also gave two undergraduates the opportunity to work on this research as part of their academic development. One worked as a research assitant on this research, although she was funded on an external scholarship. Another worked on this project for his honors thesis and then was paid hourly under this project while he contributed to our publication. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Please see section on the target audiences for this research. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? During the next reporting period, we plan to have our publication that is currently under review published in the Journal of Forestry. My current graduate student plans to complete his Master's thesis and submit two publications on the prescribed fire training exchanges. I plan to travel to the Society for Conservation Biology and Society of American Foresters meetings this year to present current research activities. I also plan to support the last year of study for a graudate student working on collaborative forest planning for her research.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? I have published a peer-reviewed paper, a book chapter, another white paper, and have a peer-reviewed paper in review on the CFLRP. I also coordinate a researchers network on the CFLRP, conducting outreach with other researchers and grad students and organized two symposia last summer on the CFLRP. An important aspect of this program is the design of cross-boundary and cross-agency prescribed fire efforts. My graduate student Andrew Spencer is conducting research specifically on this aspect of collaborative forest restoration. He has completed a survey with over 400 participants and is working on two publications that he will submit in 2014 when he completes his Master's degree.

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2013 Citation: Schultz, C. and T. Jedd. The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program: A History and Overview of the First Ten Projects. Presented at the International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Estes Park, CO, June 4-8 2013.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2013 Citation: Schultz, C. and D. Coelho. The Design and Governance of Collaborative Forest Restoration Monitoring Programs. Presented at the International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Estes Park, CO, June 4-8 2013.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2012 Citation: Coelho, D. and C. Schultz. Preliminary Findings: The Design and Governance of Multi-Party Monitoring under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, Colorado State University. White Paper. October 2012.
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2013 Citation: Coelho, D., Wurtzebach, Z., and Schultz, C. 2013. Adaptive management in Egan, D. and T. Dubay, eds. Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Handbook, pp. 163-190. Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2014 Citation: Schultz, C., Coelho, D., Beam, R. 2014 (expected). The Design and Governance of Multi-Party Monitoring Programs under the CFLRP. Submitted to Journal of Forestry in September 2013.

Progress 01/01/12 to 12/31/12

Outputs
OUTPUTS: In 2009, the USFS established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), which supports implementation of collaboratively developed, landscape-scale restoration projects on National Forest System lands. As of February 2012, 23 projects were funded under the program, now a major component of National Forest management and policy. The CFLRP is an innovative policy experiment and of broader interest as the most prominent example of an emerging policy model that emphasizes competitive prioritization of resources and monitoring of outcomes. The program provides and excellent opportunity for policy analysis and research on policy learning. In calendar year 2012, I completed research on the first ten projects funded under CFLRP and published the first article on this program examining historical trends that led to the CFLRP and our findings based on a systematic review of project proposals. We began research on the design and governance of these projects' monitoring/adaptive management strategies based on interviews and document review. Based on this, we have published a preliminary report highlighting the two projects in Colorado and are preparing a manuscript for peer-reviewed publication. We discuss the range of governance approaches for monitoring/adaptive management programs and an overview of challenges, related to funding constraints, challenges about the nature of monitoring vs. research and adaptive management, and limitations associated with policies and institutional capacity. I coordinated a national network of all CFLRP researchers and am co-coordinating an organized session at the upcoming International Symposium for Society and Resource Management, hosted by CSU, where two of my graduate students will present our research. I have also begun work with an M.S. student who is developing a research proposal examining the Fire Learning Network, a key precursor to the CFLRP, and have recruited 2 new graduate students to work on CFLRP-related topics. We received a $4,000 grant from the Ecological Restoration Institute to contribute to their handbook on landscape-scale forest restoration and were contacted by The Nature Conservancy to submit a proposal to the USFS for work on the new Integrated Resource Restoration budgeting approach. I submitted this proposal in Dec. 2012 and have subsequently been invited to represent the external stakeholder community at the annual USFS Chief's Review, a major, prestigious annual event with USFS leadership. Our research is contributing to social learning particularly around the design of multi-party monitoring and adaptive management strategies. We have been contacted repeatedly for advice on these topics, especially by the projects taking place in Colorado. Our publications provide practical guidance for developing successful monitoring/adaptive management programs. By promoting high quality monitoring and adaptive management programs, we are contributing to better environmental management in the face of the vast social, economic, and ecological uncertainty that pervades efforts to conduct forest restoration. PARTICIPANTS: Graduate students who worked on this project were Theresa Jedd, a Ph.D. student in Political Science who contributed to our first publication, Dana Coelho, a Ph.D. student in Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, who led our research on monitoring/adaptive management, and Andrew Spencer, an M.S. student in Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, who is beginning his master's work on the Fire Learning Network. Ryan Beam, an undergraduate student in Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, also contributed to our first publication as part of an independent study. We partnered with and were funded by the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute at CSU and the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University to publish reports and chapters on our research on monitoring/adaptive management programs for forest restoration projects like those funded under CFLRP. We have also conducted field visits to almost all of the first ten CFLRP projects to conduct interviews and met with federal agency staff, university partners, environmental organizations, industry representatives, and other participants. Our researchers network has involved other academicians at universities, Forest Service Research Stations, and who work as independent contractors. We have also had participation from the USFS Washington Office staff and other NGO partners who are part of the CFLRP Coalition. TARGET AUDIENCES: Target audiences have been the broad set of stakeholders involved in forest restoration projects nationwide. These include university researchers, university research institutes like the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, NGOs such as The Nature Conservancy and Defenders of Wildlife, industry groups, federal agencies such as the USFS and US Fish and Wildlife Service, state agencies, and political/community representatives. Our reports are targeted towards all participants interested in these projects, which are the USFS' flagship program for forest restoration, now the central management focus of the agency. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.

Impacts
Our publication on the history of the CFLRP and the first ten projects allowed us to establish my lab and CSU as a leader in CFLRP research. Colleagues have indicated that our publication is highly useful and relevant for setting up their own research and supporting their publications. We also were in a strong position to organize the research network of all CFLRP researchers, mentioned above. Staff from the USFS Washington Office and external NGOs have begun to join these calls and our network. Our research on monitoring/adaptive management strategies has proven useful to the CFRLP projects, particularly the two in Colorado. These groups have contacted us for copies of our reports and advice on how to proceed with their own adaptive management strategies. Additionally, the Ecological Restoration Institute asked my lab to write a chapter for their handbook on landscape restoration based on our research on monitoring and adaptive management on the CFLRP projects. It is likely that our research and recommendations will lead to improvements in how these projects design and implement their monitoring and adaptive management strategies.

Publications

• Schultz, C., Jedd, T., and Beam, R. 2012. The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act as a Policy Experiment: A History and Overview of Funded Projects. Journal of Forestry, 110(7): 381-391.
• Schultz, C. and Coelho, D. 2012. The Design and Governance of Multi-Party Monitoring under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program: Preliminary Report. October 2012. Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO.