The Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative is a direct partnership between the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, the University of Vermont, and the USDA Forest Service. The FEMC was established as the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative in 1996 through a memorandum of understanding with the above partners. In 2015, work began to transform the cooperative model of ecosystem monitoring pioneered by the VMC into a regional cooperative.
The Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative has since expanded to include other northeastern state natural resource management agencies and many other partnerships too numerous to list here. Funding and in-kind contributions from multiple agencies and organizations sustain a staff for meeting facilitation, data management, analysis and synthesis, and long term monitoring. A broader network of environmental professionals across the region identify and contribute key data and information from independently funded research and monitoring to the data archive and participate in FEMC sponsored meetings and workshops to aggregate our knowledge and understanding of forested ecosystems.
Supported Partnerships and Collaborations
FEMC supports the work of several groups by convening meetings, facilitating collaborations, tracking outputs and/or providing data infrastructure. Current groups supported by FEMC include:
- The Lye Brook Subcommittee, a group of individuals conducting research and monitoring projects in the Lye Brook Wilderness Area of the Green Mountain National Forest
- The Long Term Soils Monitoring program , conducting a 200-year study of forest soils at five sites in Vermont
- The Catskill Science Collaborative, which is using FEMC's data archive to organize and share data on the Catskill region of New York.
Key Partners
Key Partners are organizations contributing to the governance and accomplishment of FEMC’s strategic and operational goals.
Funding Partners
FEMC receives its core operation funding from the USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area State and Private Forestry, and mobilizes additional funding from a wide range of sources.
Project Partners
Beyond our key partners, FEMC works with a number of other organizations on specific projects and initiative. For a full list of our partner projects, check out our regional projects page at https://www.uvm.edu/femc/cooperative/regional_projects