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Testing, Verifying, and Modifying the Management -level Vegetation <br />Monitoring portion of the General Monitoring Protocol <br />Prepared for: <br />Technical Committee <br />Prepared by: <br />Executive Director's Office <br />September 9, 2002 <br />Introduction <br />The Technical Committee (TC) decided at their April 2001 meeting to implement <br />the Management -level vegetation monitoring portion of the draft General Monitoring <br />Protocol dated January 19, 2001 at the Phase 1 area of Cottonwood Ranch (see <br />Development and Enhancement Plan for Nebraska Public Power District's Cottonwood <br />Ranch Property, July 21, 1999 for more detailed description of Phase 1). [Note, this <br />protocol has since been split into a Vegetation monitoring protocol and a Geomorphology <br />monitoring protocol] The Executive Director's budget was augmented to conduct the <br />fieldwork after approval by the Finance Committee. The purpose of the Management - <br />level vegetation monitoring portion of the General Monitoring Protocol was to develop <br />baseline vegetation information prior to management actions, including forest clearing. <br />Specific goals of this test were to 1) Field test, verify, and modify the Management -level <br />vegetation monitoring portion of the Technical Committee's Draft General Monitoring <br />Protocol, and 2) Compare and contrast information gathered from this method of <br />vegetation monitoring with the methods described in the Program -level Vegetation <br />Monitoring portion of the General Monitoring Protocol. The Program -level Vegetation <br />Monitoring portion of the General Monitoring Protocol was implemented on Cottonwood <br />Ranch (CWR) and Jeffrey Island (JI) during the summer of 2001 by Central Nebraska <br />Public Power and Irrigation District (Central) and the Nebraska Public Power District <br />(NPPD). <br />Methods <br />Vegetation sampling points were selected by placing a grid with spacing of 1 <br />point per 6 acres over the Phase 1 area of Cottonwood Ranch. A total of 17 grid points <br />fell into the Phase 1 area. At each sampling point, point- centered quarter sampling <br />(Laycock and Batcheler 1975) and "modified step -point sampling" (Evans and Love <br />1957; Owensby 1973) were conducted. For each point, we recorded the distance to the <br />nearest live tree (greater than 5 cm dbh), tree species, and dbh in each of 4 quadrants out <br />to a maximum distance of 30.48m or 100 feet from the center point. We also recorded <br />the distance to the nearest species of sapling /shrub (defined as a woody stem less than 5 <br />cm in dbh) in each of the 4 quadrants out to a maximum distance of 30.48 meters or 100 <br />feet from each center point. For each of the 17 sample points, we recorded the species of <br />plant hit by a `step - point' device ( Owensby 1973) placed every meter for 25 meters in <br />