Assessment

You will need to complete a local assessment of the restoration area before any other activities. Knowing how degraded an ecosystem is and how these negative factors have affected the biodiversity of the ecosystem, but also human health and wellbeing, will be important to creating an effective project. One way to help visualize effects on an ecosystem is to create a “reference model”. A reference model helps you get a picture of indicators of site health prior to degradation. A reference model can include several examples of functional ecosystems. You can then compare the “before” and “after” to show how much the ecosystem has been affected ¹.

After diving into how the specific ecosystem has been affected, you should then take stock of the broader picture at hand. This includes exploring other biophysical conditions in the area, the socioeconomic conditions of the community, any pertinent policy or legal information, and cultural or historical influences on the ecosystem. These factors may all contribute to the degradation of the ecosystem as well and will be crucial in creating an effective plan. These factors can also shed light on potential barriers and threats to the restoration project as well, such as skepticism from stakeholders or rightsholders in the community ¹.

To put all this information together, it is important to create a detailed inventory with all these baseline conditions. This can include important measurements of the physical environment, community structures, and ecosystem functions amongst other important factors. In addition, it is important when assessing the site to create an inventory of the pressures within the ecosystem and ensure that they can be managed before any active restoration takes place ¹.