Holistic Ecological Monitoring Workshop

By attending this course, you will be equipped with the tools necessary to understand how your decisions impact water infiltration, nutrient cycling, microbe and insect populations, biodiversity, and the land's ability to sequester carbon. You will gain the confidence to evaluate how the land functions. The insights you will receive are derived from the experiences of thousands of game managers, trackers, government agencies, and ranchers in their efforts to improve natural resources.

You will become ecologically literate, capable of identifying functioning and non-functioning water cycles, mineral cycles, community dynamics, and energy flow across a given landscape.

Ecological monitoring is the method by which you can assess whether your land management decisions are beneficial. Whether you are a landowner, government entity, nonprofit organization, or concerned citizen, performing ecological protocols on the land you care for will fundamentally change how you perceive the land and determine whether the ecological cycles are functioning properly.

The four ecosystem processes apply to all environments on our planet: the water cycle, mineral cycle, community dynamics, and energy flow across a landscape determine the future viability of human communities, economies, and wildlife in the area. Examining each of these processes in detail on the soil surface will provide valuable insights into past management practices and guide you in taking actions to achieve your goals and objectives.

There are two protocols by which we can assess these processes: the Basic Monitoring Protocol and the Comprehensive Monitoring Protocol.

The Basic Monitoring Protocol is an incredibly useful and quick process that a ranch or farm can employ to determine if their grazing or management planning is leading them in the desired direction. We will identify areas suitable for use as transects and then observe five separate plots in each transect, assessing how they function in relation to the four ecosystem processes. This will provide you with mostly qualitative data and photos over time, showing how your management is achieving your desired outcomes.

The Comprehensive Monitoring Protocol is more robust and can take multiple full days to complete. It is highly valuable due to the amount of raw quantitative data collected. We will guide you through monitoring 100 plots, each with over a dozen data points. This type of monitoring is especially useful when working with government agencies and nonprofit organizations responsible for overseeing land. It is also recommended for anyone involved in making management decisions on the land and observing changes over time on a large scale.