5. Monitoring and Evaluation
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Marta Nowack
“I need to create a new management plan for my forest area. I want to increase biodiversity and adapt my forest to climate change, whilst not changing much of our current way of doing things, and I would like to understand how to move forwards with this.”
Monitoring and evaluation are essential if you want to track the restoration progress and assess outcomes effectively. Monitoring is the continuous collection of data over time to detect changes, thus providing real-time insights into the effects of restoration activities. It may also cover continued observation of drivers of forest degradation. As monitoring helps you to detect emerging issues it enables you adjust your forest restoration strategy in a timely manner.
Monitoring and evaluation involve several key steps, including:
- the development of a monitoring design and evaluation plan according to the objectives and budget;
- the design of the data collection protocols and tools (equipment, field manuals, interview protocols or survey questionnaires);
- data collection, management and analysis (including data quality analysis);
- evaluation of the monitoring process to assess its efficiency and effectiveness.