Monitoring of Forested Natural Areas in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis City, MO, contains 121 acres managed as woodland or forested natural areas: 98 acres in Forest Park and 13 acres in O’Fallon Park. In Forest Park, standardized Missouri forest vegetation monitoring plots were started in 1993 to develop and guide habitat management such as thinning, species richness development, etc. In 2018 and 2019, a holistic Natural Resources Management Plan for Forest Park provided additional recommended metrics and monitoring, some of which have already begun implementation. This case study describes the role of forest monitoring over time, including how monitoring became a useful tool for education and outreach as well as management.

In a nutshell, this resource offers:

• A timeline of how monitoring changed over time in an urban forested natural area.
• Partnerships that enabled citizen science monitoring opportunities. 
• A description of how monitoring can inform adaptive management in urban forested natural areas.

How to use this resource:

• As a list of metrics to monitor in urban forested natural areas, plus ideas for how to carry out monitoring. 

Author: Amy Witt, Shawnell Faber, Alan Jankowski

Date published: 2020

Point of contact: Amy Witt, Ecologist, Forest Park Forever, awitt@forestparkforever.org 

Citation: Witt, A. L.; Faber, S. C.; and Jankowski, A. R. 2020. Natural Resource Monitoring Progression of Forest Park’s Forested Natural Areas in St. Louis, Missouri. Cities and the Environment (CATE): Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 14.

Resource is available online here.