Soils as an Indicator of Forest Health

The Montreal Process was formed in 1994 to develop an internationally agreed upon set of criteria and indicators for the conservation and sustainable management of temperate and boreal forests. In response to this effort, the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) and Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) programs of the USDA Forest Service have implemented a national soil monitoring program to address specific questions related to: (1) the current and future status of soil resources and (2) the contribution of forest soils to the global carbon cycle. As the first and only nationally consistent effort to monitor forest soil quality in the United States, this program provides critical baseline information on the current status of the soil resource and the potential effects of natural and human disturbance on forest health and productivity.