February 15, 2017

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OVERVIEW

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The draft Northwest Forest Plan science synthesis was made available online last fall. Because the science synthesis is a highly influential science assessment, it is receiving an independent peer review under guidelines from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (http://www.fs.fed.us/qoi/peerreview.shtml). Peer review of the synthesis report is being managed independently of the U.S. Forest Service by the Ecological Society of America (ESA).

​The Forest Service provided two options for the public to provide input on the science content of the synthesis to the group of independent peer reviewers: 1) Provide written input (upload letters or type input directly) on the draft science synthesis through January 20, 2017; or 2) Provide oral input at a public forum and webinar held on December 6, 2016 in Portland OR (or via broadcast webinar).  According to the OMB guidelines peer reviewers may consider this public input as they prepare their reviews. The authors of the synthesis and the Forest Service managers will not be responding to the public input.

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A third party contractor, MacKenzie Marketing Group, hosted the public forum and webinar to allow for oral and written input on the science content of the synthesis. The input has been compiled and will be provided to the peer reviewers for their consideration as they prepare their written review comments for the authors of the synthesis. The peer reviewers will direct their comments only to the authors according to standard peer review procedures and are not required to respond directly to the public comments.  The peer review process is expected to conclude in March 2017 when the peer review comments are submitted by ESA to the authors of the synthesis, who will use them in revising their chapters.

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MacKenzie Marketing Group provided instructions on their public input webpage on how to submit public input and instructed submitters to clarify what chapters their comments pertained to so they could be compiled by chapter.  The following outlines the process MacKenzie Marketing Group used to compile the Public Input on the Draft Northwest Forest Plan Science Synthesis:

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1. Public input was compiled verbatim and was not edited by the contractor.  This means that all comments were included with no attempt to remove comments that may not relate to the scientific or technical aspects of the synthesis.  Chapter 0 includes General/Unclassified Public Input.  Peer reviewers are asked to consider the comments in this section in its entirety since they may contain comments relevant to the chapter they were assigned to review.

2. If public input specifically listed a chapter that was the focus of their input, that information will be found as an excerpt within each chapter section; submitter information precedes each comment. If they did not reference a chapter for their input it will appear in Chapter 0 General/Unclassified Public Input.

3. All uploaded and USPS mailed letters are being provided in their entirety as a link on the webpage immediately following the Public Input Chapters. The full letters are available at http://www.mmg-insights.com/nwfpsspublicinput.

4. Every effort has been made to assign input where specified by submitter. If input relates to more than one chapter, it may be found in multiple locations.  Some public input was also submitted to multiple chapters.

5. Footnotes, if provided, can be found as endnotes after each input submission.

6. A resource library of all additional submitted materials (mostly reference materials) can be found on the attached table of contents and at http://www.mmg-insights.com/nwfpsspublicinput sorted by submitter name.

7. All website links, references and/or citations are included as provided. No guarantee is made to the validity of the links or references.

8. Software tools such as scanning, OCR (optical character reading), and word processing software have been used to convert and compile input from all sources including .pdfs, USPS mail, etc. Every effort was made to deliver input with original formatting integrity wherever possible.

9. Organizational affiliations to submitters are provided if that information was included. Affiliation was not a requirement of registration or uploading of input and may not be present for all submissions.

10. If redundancy is seen, it is a result of multiple uploads or inputs by different organizations or individuals. All redundancy is included to reflect the direct input of the individual or organization and provide a complete record of all submissions

If peer reviewers have any questions about the process used to compile this document, please contact Lisa MacKenzie at lisam@mackenzie-marketing.com.

Questions about the Forest Service draft science synthesis can be directed to Becky Gravenmier by email at bgravenmier@fs.fed.us.