History of ozone injury monitoring methods and the development of a recommended protocol

Abstract

The minimum requirement for long–term monitoring of air pollution effects on forest stands is to develop methods for observers to locate, evaluate, and re–evaluate individual trees at intervals of one or more years. Studies of this nature have used permanent quadrats or "plots" in which individual plants are tagged or mapped. Multiple levels of information can be gathered from this approach depending on how the plots are structured, how many plots are established in a given area, the size and shape of plots, and how the plots are located. The appropriate level of complexity depends on the research or management objectives and resources available. A simple objective in air pollution effects studies is to track changes in the crown condition of selected individual trees of one or more pollutant–sensitive species. More comprehensive assessments are possible, such as the inventory and monitoring of the population distribution and structure of the sensitive species and all associated plant species within the plot. Such information is valuable in describing plant community succession, which may be affected by air pollution stress. This paper reviews previous work that describes long–term trends in crown condition of ozone–sensitive ponderosa and Jeffrey pines—such as the oxidant injury score (OIS) developed for use in the San Bernardino National Forest (SBNF) (Miller 1973); the USDA Forest Service, Forest Pest Management method (FPM) (Pronos and others 1978); the USDI National Park Service, Air Quality Division method (AQD) (Stolte and Bennett 1985), and the Eridanus injury index (EII), proposed by Duriscoe (1988)—and recommends a procedure for defining sub–populations and locating plots in future ozone injury evaluation efforts.

Parent Publication

• Evaluating ozone air pollution effects on pines in the western United States

Citation

Duriscoe, Daniel; Stolte, Kenneth; Pronos, John. 1996. History of ozone injury monitoring methods and the development of a recommended protocol. In: Miller, Paul R.; Stolte, Kenneth W.; Duriscoe, Daniel M.; Pronos, John, technical coordinators. Evaluating ozone air pollution effects on pines in the western United States. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW–GTR–155. Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; p. 19-28