View this email in your browser

The Monitoring Monthly newsletter connects our cooperators by providing updates and insight into our latest projects. Our work would not be possible without support from the U.S. Forest Service Eastern Region State and Private Forestry and the University of Vermont.

Ecosystem Monitoring Fund Request for Proposals

We are now accepting proposals for monitoring projects supported by the Ecosystem Monitoring Fund. Projects can receive up to $25,000 in funding from FEMC and require a 1:1 non-Federal match. Click below to read the full RFP and learn about fund priorities. Proposals are due March 25 at 5pm.

Learn More

Northeast Silviculture Library

The University of Vermont Forestry Program and Forest Ecosystems Monitoring Cooperative are excited to announce the launch of a new online community of practice, the Northeast Silviculture Library. The Northeast Silviculture Library (NESL) is a virtual symposium of silvicultural prescriptions and associated outcomes of actual on-the-ground management activities. It is a place for foresters and other resource managers to exchange real, on-the-ground examples and outcomes of their management activities, with the overall goal of increasing knowledge of how to best steward the changing landscape of the Northeast to promote sustainability and adaptability. The library was conceived with the idea that every silviculture treatment is an experiment, every forest manager both a teacher and a learner. NESL is an extension of the Great Lakes Silviculture Library, established in 2014, to northeastern North America.

Access the Library

Farewell to John Truong

A Message from Director Jim Duncan

I’d like to congratulate John Truong on achieving a long-held goal of becoming a Game Warden with the State of Vermont! I shared this news at our annual conference, but John’s last day was February 4 and we wanted to extend the news to those of you who weren’t at the conference. John first got involved with the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative in 2016 as a field technician in the Forest Health Monitoring program. He stayed on after the field season wrapped up to help with a range of tasks, from data entry to upgrading data for the long-term soils monitoring program, and helping out with the Annual Conference. For those of you that know John, you know that he excels at most everything he tries, and it wasn’t long before he was running the field season, master of logistics for the conference, primary site operator for the air quality monitoring site at Underhill, Vermont, and lead on our meteorological monitoring. I can personally say that we as an organization could not have made the transition to a regional model and the FEMC without John, and I have been grateful every day for John’s tenacity, competence and ability to make everyone around him feel joyful and valued. More recently, John has been instrumental in working with State Coordinators to expand the forest health monitoring program to the seven-state region, envisioning a field program that lowers barriers to equity, inclusion and participation, and expanding our fee-for-service offerings with a number of successful service contracts supporting data rescue, data visualization and information sharing in the region. John leaves big shoes to fill, and we are looking forward to sharing information on his replacement in the coming weeks. If you haven’t already, please take a moment to share a goodbye with John, and join me in wishing him luck on this next step in his career!