A New Tool for Assessing Restoration Potential and Monitoring Restoration Success in Tallgrass Prairies: The Natural Community Health Index

Abstract

There is a need for natural area managers to better quantify the results of management actions and the potential of sites for restoration. Detailed botanical and zoological surveys and monitoring are the most valuable scientifically but require significant cost and expertise that often are not practical to accomplish at scale. To bridge this gap between rigorous monitoring and assessment, and relying on very subjective judgements of natural community condition, we developed a natural community health index model for natural tallgrass prairie communities in the unglaciated ecoregions of Missouri. Here we relate the development of this index, its field application, and its strengths and limitations.