A decision support system for incorporating land potential information in the evaluation of restoration outcomes

Abstract

Regular monitoring and evaluation of rangeland restoration outcomes is necessary for accountability, adaptive management throughout the restoration process, and informing future project design. Monitoring and evaluating outcomes can help restoration practitioners and land managers identify restoration successes and failures. Often information about differences in potential vegetation productivity in restored areas is not collected, but it can help to understand and predict these different outcomes. Here, we provide a novel decision-tree based framework for designing monitoring programs for restoration projects. We emphasize the need to collect land potential information to help evaluate and contextualize restoration outcomes. We then highlight a new mobile phone application that can be used to collect basic land potential information with minimal time and training requirements.