The LEARN network

Multiple research sites have been designated as part of the Long-term Ecological Assessment and Restoration Network (LEARN), stretching from Mount Trumbull in northwestern Arizona, south and east along the Mogollon Rim from Flagstaff to the White Mountains, and northeast to near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. The network sites have permanently marked replicated blocks and plots (in a Before-After-Control-Impact design) to facilitate long-term monitoring. They utilize standardized methods for data collection, standardized treatments, and are well documented in terms of the experimental treatments, which have been applied at each. LEARN provides us with the ability to compare the effects of forest restoration treatments on all aspects of ecosystem dynamics across a variety of forest types from pinyon-juniper to ponderosa pine to warm-dry mixed conifer.

Research on LEARN sites has been tremendously productive, and influential in informing larger landscape-scale restoration treatments across the Southwest. Click here for a list of all the publications that have resulted from research on LEARN sites, including work by both ERI and non-ERI researchers.