A 20-year history of United States’ forest fragmentation reporting in the international Montréal Process
United States’ reporting for the Montreal Process, an international agreement on sustainable forest management, has evolved from a biocentric focus on wildlife habitat to a focus on assessing fragmentation, as a spatial property of forests, a step that helps interpret standard information in a variety of contexts—including the causes and consequences of the fragmentation. Along the way, the results have fostered connections between high-level policy issues such as “keeping forests as forest” and the underlying science to address those issues, helping to bridge the gap between science and policy in sustainable forest management.
The United States' implementation of the Montréal Process indicator of forest fragmentation presents a case study in the development and application of science within a 'criteria and indicator' framework to evaluate forest sustainability. A recent publication by Forest Service scientists reviews the historical evolution and status of the indicator, and summarizes the latest results.
While forest fragmentation is increasing, the rate of increase has slowed since 2006. Most of the fragmentation in the western United States is associated with changes in semi-natural land cover (e.g., shrubs and grass) while most of the eastern fragmentation is associated with changes in agriculture and developed land (including roads). Research pursuing the implementation of this indicator exemplifies the role of a ‘criteria and indicator’ framework in identifying policy-relevant questions and then focusing research on those questions. Subsequent indicator reporting exemplifies the value of a common language and developed set of metrics to help bridge the gaps between science and policy at national and international scales.
