Guideline Monitoring Program

Sustaining forest values through guidelines

Timber harvest is an important tool to maintain healthy forest growth. Harvests are also necessary for supplying wood products, a valuable source of income for both public and private forest landowners. They’re a management tool that can also encourage species that thrive in recently harvested forests, such as ruffed grouse, American woodcock, and white-tailed deer. Selective and sustainable harvesting helps maintain a diverse mix of forest types and ages, supporting a wide range of wildlife and flora.

To help ensure that forest management actions including harvest continue to produce healthy forests, clean water, wildlife habitat, and other values into the future, the Minnesota Forest Resources Council (MFRC) develops and maintains voluntary Forest Management Guidelines (FMGs). As part of the Sustainable Forest Resource Act (SFRA), the DNR conducts yearly monitoring to understand how these FMGs are applied by land managers across federal, state, county, and private land.

What is the Guideline Monitoring Program?

The DNR’s Guideline Monitoring Program (GMP) reports on how landowners are following the FMGs across the state.

Created to regularly collect data to understand how guidelines are being used, the GMP also provides education and training opportunities for loggers, forest managers, and landowners to improve guideline application. Alongside the Resource Assessment Program (RAP), the GMP uses satellite imagery and LiDAR technology to detect year-to-year changes in forest canopy and identify where harvests have occurred throughout the state.

Every year, third-party contractors collect data on a sample of sites, typically 100, across all forested areas of the state. Collected data offers insights on:

Harvest objectives, timing, seasonality, silvicultural methods and planning
Streams, including trout streams and seasonal streams, on or near the harvest
Use of filter strips (buffer zones around lakes, rivers, and streams)
Management of wetlands, both forested and open water
Roads, landings and other infrastructure
Erosion control methods
Protection of cultural resources
Visual quality
Leave trees, riparian areas, and legacy patches (sections of forest left uncut for ecological values)
Endangered or threatened species

Guideline Monitoring Program staff conducting quality control of data in the field in 2023.
Water bars, or erosion control measures that slow the flow of water down a steep slope, at a GMP site.
Rutting left by equipment at a field site.
An empty beaver dam from a field site with an open water wetland.
A landing area where logs are typically piled or chipped, as shown from the chip remains in this photo, from a site surveyed by GMP.

How is this information used?

The program collects information about each FMG and uses the results to inform priorities to focus on for educational trainings for loggers and land managers. To deliver these trainings, the GMP partners with Sustainable Forests Education Cooperative (SFEC), University of Minnesota Extension, and the Minnesota Logger Education Program (MLEP). The GMP also participates in the MLEP conferences and trainings every year. Check out the SFEC website for an upcoming training near you!

The GMP publishes a report every two years examining the anonymous data the program collects on a watershed scale, typically covering two to three watersheds per year and the entire state over five years. Additionally, it publishes a five-year report examining results of the statewide data on a regional landscape level. Since its start in 2000, the program has reported on over 1,300 sites covering 92% of Minnesota’s forested land, with watershed-level analyses since 2014.

Reports

Contact

Lila Westreich, Guideline Monitoring Program Consultant