About the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative

FEMC Logo The mission of the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative is to serve the northeast temperate forest region through improved understanding of long-term trends, annual conditions, and interdisciplinary relationships of the physical, chemical, and biological components of forested ecosystems.

The FEMC also promotes the efficient coordination of multi-disciplinary environmental monitoring and research activities among federal, state, university, and private-sector agencies with common interests in the long-term health, management, and protection of forested ecosystems.

FEMC works towards its mission and goals with a professional staff, web-based Project Library and Database, education and outreach programs, and continuing efforts to support and coordinate the region’s forest ecosystem interests.

FEMC History

Taking its inspiration from the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative, the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative builds upon the long-term environmental monitoring initiated by the VMC in 1990 with a grant from US Senator Patrick Leahy. The FEMC continues to manage over three decades of Vermont's forest ecosystem data, and is actively adding data sets from the surrounding states. This information is intended to benefit research, natural resource management, education, and public interest. The Cooperative serves as a hub of forest monitoring and research efforts, bringing together practitioners from a range of disciplines and institutions to work together on monitoring and assessing forested ecosystems in the northeastern forest region.

The Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative is a partnership of Northeastern State Agencies, the University of Vermont, and the USDA Forest Service. Expanding on the more than one hundred forest ecosystem projects on Mount Mansfield in northern Vermont and Lye Brook in southern Vermont originally supported by the VMC, The FEMC maintains a long-standing, diverse repository of monitoring and research data relevant to forest ecosystem structure, health and function. The repository includes datasets unique to the archive, region-specific extracts of data maintained by other organizations, and links to datasets hosted elsewhere. Web access to this searchable database provides linkages between datasets, documents, people, organizations, news and events used in management, decision-making, research and student training. FEMC supports the collaborative network by providing data retrieval, archive, management, sharing, analysis and/or synthesis coordination. FEMC staff also supports long-term air quality and forest health monitoring programs for Mount Mansfield and Lye Brook and three meteorological stations on Lake Champlain.

FEMC Governance

The FEMC staff takes direction from a Steering Committee composed of key partners from across the region. A State Partnership Committee in each participating state sets regional priorities and guides the execution of regional work.