AUTHORS: Shelby Timm, MO Department of Conservation; Brad Graham, MO Department of Conservation
ABSTRACT: The Missouri Ozark Forest Ecosystem Project (MOFEP) was initiated in 1989 by the Missouri Department of Conservation and was designed to continue for over 100 years. MOFEP experimentally investigates the landscape-scale impacts of uneven-aged and even-aged forest management practices on a range of ecosystem components. MOFEP was designed to be adaptive so that lessons learned can be applied throughout the life of the project. Over 30 research projects have been initiated on MOFEP in collaboration with numerous partners. Of those projects, five are considered “core” projects that are repeated periodically to monitor changes throughout the life of MOFEP. Due to the extensive temporal and spatial scales, MOFEP has faced a range of challenges over the first 35 years. Some of those challenges include maintaining data throughout the evolution of technology and software advances, maintaining clean datasets across sampling intervals and researchers, and maintaining relevance in the face of new conservation challenges and priorities. Despite these various challenges, MOFEP continues to adapt and inform forest management actions throughout the Central Hardwood Region. As technology advances, so does the range of opportunities to use these long-term data to investigate new questions and contribute to new priorities. Currently, MOFEP data are being used to develop multiple new planning tools and forest models that will contribute to Missouri’s tiered approach to natural community and habitat management.
