JACKSON, Wyo. — A new forest-monitoring site in the Teton Range has been added to an international network of forest plots and research scientists who track long-term tree health over time.
A system of six plots in the Teton area is now included in Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) Network database. Two University of Wyoming (UW) professors, Tucker Furniss and Sara Germain, co-founded the new study site, which was established in 2024 and officially joined the network in 2025. The main plot, 25 hectares (1 hectare equals approximately 2.5 acres) on the north shore of Bradley Lake in Grand Teton National Park, consists of “upper-montane, mixed-conifer forest,” according to the site overview on ForestGEO’s website. Five smaller plots make up the local network, each one 4 hectares or smaller.
“Every forest is unique and responds to change differently,” Furniss said in a news post on ForestGEO’s website. “Our site is the first in the Rocky Mountain Ecoregion — and the first in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Trees here endure extreme cold, and grow on rocky, mountainous terrain. As the environment changes, they may be hit hard because they’re already close to their limits.”
Over the last two summers, Furniss, Germain, and a team of 18 students and technicians mapped and documented nearly 35,000 trees in the various plots. The research sites span a range of forest types from 6,500 to 10,500 feet in elevation. A total of 17 different tree species were cataloged, including Douglas fir, Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, lodgepole pine, Rocky Mountain maple and aspen. The terrain varies from wet meadows to dry, rocky slopes.
The smaller, satellite plots were chosen in order to show a sample of forests that could be broadly representative of the central Rocky Mountains. Those plots are located near Paintbrush Canyon, Cascade Canyon, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, AMK Ranch and the Snake River. Learn more about the Teton plots here.
“We spent years working in ForestGEO study sites in Yosemite National Park in California, Wind River in Washington, and Cedar Breaks National Monument in Utah,” Germain was quoted as saying. “Now, we feel like proud parents to have our own plot in the Tetons. It’s exciting to address important knowledge gaps, and to find out more about Rocky Mountain forests and compare them with forests around the world. There’s just something special about getting to know every last tree.”
ForestGEO is an initiative managed by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, which established the first site in Panama in 1981. The network is dedicated to the long-term study of trees and forests around the world. There are currently 84 research sites in 29 countries that have, so far, mapped 12,000 different species of tree.
