Monitoring Made Easy
 
Every manager knows it’s important to monitor changes in the land. Without monitoring, how can a manager determine whether his or her management actions are working well?
 
But often people assume that monitoring land health is very technical, difficult, time-consuming, or expensive. Here’s the good news: it does not have to be any of these things.
 
My colleagues and I have developed a set of simple methods for monitoring rangeland health that can be used by a wide variety of users in a wide variety of management contexts. We present these methods in a colorfully illustrated, user-friendly guidebook entitled Monitoring Rangeland Health: A Guide for Pastoralist Communities and Other Land Managers in Eastern Africa. Although this guidebook was developed for eastern Africa, the methods and principles we present are applicable to rangelands around the world.
 
All You Need Is a Stick
 
The monitoring methods we have developed require no special equipment -- only a stick 1 m long, a pen or pencil, and a copy of the data sheet. The data sheet is almost entirely graphical, so it is quick and easy to use and provides a visual image of the site as you collect data.
 
Four Simple Methods
 
We present four simple methods that can be used to monitor changes in the land for almost all management and monitoring objectives. These methods generate a variety of ‘indicators’ of land health. We focus on indicators that tell us about the health of the land in terms of the soil and site stability (limiting soil erosion), hydrologic function (promoting infiltration and water storage capacity, and reducing runoff) and biotic integrity (promoting growth and reproduction of plants and maintaining a healthy plant community). These three processes form the foundation of healthy land.
 
Method 1: Plant and Ground Cover
 
This method involves recording the plants or other things protecting the soil surface (such as litter, biological crusts, or rocks) at 20 cm intervals along the 1 m stick. Data are recorded by circling icons on the graphical data sheet.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rangeland Monitoring
Monitoring Activities
 
Monitoring Guidebooks
 
In Monitoring Rangeland Health, my colleagues and I introduce a simple set of monitoring methods and a ten-step process for designing and executing a monitoring program.
 
These methods are currently being used by NGOs in Kenya and Namibia with a combined footprint of nearly 35,000 km sq.
 
Although written for land managers in eastern Africa, we have received requests to adapt it or translate it for use in Namibia, Botswana, Iran, Mexico, Argentina, and Mongolia.
Click here to download a copy of Monitoring Rangeland Health.
 
Guide to Monitoring Boma Sites is a supplemental guide for managers who want to monitor the impacts of livestock corrals on the landscape. Corrals, or “bomas”, are used not only to protect livestock from predators at night but also to create patches of high quality grass in specific locations.
Training Workshops
 
I periodically hold workshops to teach land managers, NGO staff, and others the methods introduce in the manual. E-mail me if you wish to be updated about these workshops.
Testing Monitoring Methods
 
My colleagues and I are continuing to test and refine the methods we introduced in the monitoring guidebook, through a combination of feedback from other users and testing the methods’ quantitative performance.
Promoting Data Sharing
 
Within the Laikipia-Samburu region of Kenya, I am working with local NGOs and land managers to promote monitoring and sharing of monitoring data. Ultimately, we hope that a large community of land managers will be able to deposit their monitoring data into a shared database. This data will help us to understand which management actions are working and under what circumstances.
Click here to download a copy of Guide to Monitoring Boma Sites.
Method 2: Gaps Between Plants
 
This method involves recording the number of times the 1 m stick falls entirely within a gap between plant bases or between plant canopies. Landscapes with more large gaps between plants are more susceptible to erosion. Data are recorded by making a mark through the gap boxes on the data sheet to indicate the presence of a plant base or canopy along the stick (and thus absence of a gap).
Method 3: Plant Height
 
This method involves recording the height of the tallest plant part in a box 1 x 1 m in front of the stick at each point where the stick is laid down. Plant height data are useful for understanding changes in the vertical structure of the vegetation. Data are recorded by circling the appropriate height class on the data sheet.
Method 4: Plant Density
 
Plant density can be measured at several different scales, depending on the plants of interest. For most needs, counting the number of plants rooted inside a belt transect is the most efficient way to measure density.