Regional Calibration
The main steps in EOV include regional calibration, creating a monitoring plan, conducting short term and long term monitoring, quality assurance review of the data, and reporting data to land managers. This section provides a brief overview of regional calibration.
Ecoregion Set Up
The EOV process begins with regional calibration. This is required to account for the unique conditions, features, and species in the ecoregion where the monitoring will occur. This work is completed by accredited EOV Verifiers or Master Verifiers.
Regional calibration is critically important. It is necessary to generate accurate scorecards and subsequently to facilitate accurate scoring when monitoring. It enables accurate regional assessments of key species, functional groups, and the ecosystem potential needed to create detailed evaluation matrices.
A States and Transitions (S&T) catalog is developed as part of the set up. It outlines expected states land can exist in and the various tools available to facilitate the transition to the desired land state(s). This information, in turn, enables the Verifier to more accurately assess the land’s current state and to assist managers in selecting tools that will move the land toward the desired future state.
Finally, robust quality assurance requires reference areas to be able to accurately assess when factors outside of management’s control (e.g. significant weather events, natural disasters, prolonged drought, etc.) may be impacting scores in the region.
Ecoregion setup includes these four steps, which are described in greater detail below:
Ecoregion Description
States, Functional Groups, Transitions, and Tools
Reference Areas
Evaluation Matrix
1. Ecoregion Description
Areas monitored by EOV are separated into broad ecological regions, or ecoregions. These regions contain geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities and species. The biodiversity of flora, fauna and environments that characterize an ecological region tends to be distinct from that of other ecological regions. Ecoregions are the result of climate, geology, and landforms. They have a defined degree of brittleness which dictates the region’s response to management tools.
The ecological region is selected based on an ecological map that is widely accepted in the scientific literature. Hub Verifiers must identify the ecoregions within the areas they work, then complete the preparatory steps in this section prior to monitoring. They must also ensure their monitors are familiarized with the ecoregion prior to monitoring. Ecoregion maps on a global basis are coordinated by the Savory Institute Quality Assurance team.
2. States, Functional Groups, Transitions, and Tools
After the ecoregion has been defined, the Hub Verifier seeks to understand each region’s uniqueness and the impact of human influence through past management. This information is necessary to articulate the functioning of the ecological region and to recognize the challenges and opportunities for regeneration. State and Transition (S&T) catalogs are relevant for this purpose; they organize and communicate information about ecosystem changes within a relatively homogenous environment.
An S&T catalog is a way to describe the multiple states possible in an ecoregion, the ecological resilience of individual states to environmental stressors, and the role of management tools and natural processes in moving from one state to another. Ecoregions are the broadest land classification that can be used to create an S&T catalog.
Inside each ecoregion, land may exhibit different stable states, which differ in terms of vegetation structure, state of the soil surface, productivity, and ecosystem processes. States are represented as boxes in a state and transition diagram and described in the catalog. Vegetation and soil transitions are represented in the diagram by arrows. A place may move, or transition, from one state to another due to one or more management factors.
Transitions always will happen in response to the use of ecosystem management tools, so most of them are the result of management decisions. Weather and management can generate opportunities to promote desirable transitions (restoration or regeneration) or threats by promoting undesirable transitions (desertification, land degradation). The width of the arrow in the model represents the probability of any transition. Dotted lines are used to mark theoretical changes that have not been recorded or are considered unlikely to happen. Creating an S&T catalog is a valuable exercise in identifying the possible states that should be managed for (future resource base) in each ecoregion, the tools that can be used to promote transitions toward those states, and undesirable changes and the tools that promote them.
3. Reference Areas
Reference areas are the best-known expression of biodiversity, site stability, and ecosystem function for a given ecoregion. They serve as an exemplar of how land with highly functioning ecosystem processes appears. Reference areas are the closest example of the desired future resource base in a particular environment for a given context.
Note that the concept of reference areas is dynamic, as proper management of land bases can generate new reference areas and change the boundaries of what can be achieved. Reference areas are established to create a benchmark and are used to develop an Evaluation Matrix of leading ecological indicators for the specific ecoregion.
The reference area is identified by a Hub or Master Verifier before creating the Evaluation Matrix for the ecoregion. Reference areas are located in relevant states of an ecoregion using local knowledge, satellite imagery, information from scientific advisors, practical experience, and visual appraisal. Identifying and describing reference areas is very important but especially so in brittle ecoregions because high variability in soil, vegetation structure, and ecosystem function is more likely to occur.
In the absence of an adequate reference area, the Evaluation Matrix will be defined using available information, the S&T catalog, and local experience with the reference area being identified later.
4. Evaluation Matrix for Ecological Health Index (EHI)
The Evaluation Matrix is a scorecard made up of a set of contextually relevant leading ecological indicators. Farms and ranches in the ecoregion are monitored using the Evaluation Matrix and receive an Ecological Health Index (EHI) score that is calibrated to the ecoregion.
The EHI score serves as an aggregated measure of ecosystem health. It is based on ecological indicators associated with the four ecosystem processes – water cycle, mineral cycle, energy flow, and community dynamics. Some of the ecological indicators are and the rest are calibrated relative to the reference areas for each ecological region. The calibration is needed for certain ecological areas to account for differences related to the degree of brittleness of an area and its potential.
To calibrate an Evaluation Matrix, generic descriptors for the ecological indicators are reviewed by Master Verifiers or Hub Verifiers relative to the reference area in the region and their expertise of ecoregion variability. The indicator descriptions on the Evaluation Matrix are adjusted for the characteristics of each ecoregion. If an ecoregion has high internal variability in terms of environments or sites, and all have relevant states (e.g. forest and its related states, grassland and its related states, riparian areas) it is sometimes necessary to generate a different Evaluation Matrix for each of the differing environments.
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