Microbial Processes > Long-Term Soil Productivity (LTSP) Study > Study Details: 2 - Background

Evaluating Management Impacts on Long-Term Soil Productivity: A Research and National Forest System Cooperative Study

Regulations

The Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960 binds the Forest Service to achieve and maintain outputs of various renewable resources in perpetuity without permanent impairment of the productivity of the land. Section 6 of the National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA) charges the Secretary of Agriculture with ensuring research and continuous monitoring of each management system to safeguard the land's productivity. To comply with these acts, the Forest Service has charged each Region with developing soil monitoring standards that can detect losses in productive potential of 15 percent or greater over a planning horizon (FSH 2509.18). Soil was selected as a barometer of a site's productive potential for two reasons. First, along with climate and topography, soil is a basic, fundamentally important resource that controls both quantity and quality of such renewable forest resources as timber, wildlife habitat, and water yield. Second, soil is a non-renewable resource that is affected directly by forest management practices—particularly those surrounding timber harvest and site preparation. Thus, monitoring the condition of the soil following forest management operations can give us an index of the potential productivity of the site. The 15-percent standard was set, not because a 15-percent decline is tolerable, but because this is believed to be the lowest magnitude of change that is detectable, given current monitoring intensity.

Next page - Justification >