Inventory and Map Your Land
Ecological restoration must begin with understanding the land with an emphasis on determining its ecological health. Rarely will a tract of land have been sufficiently studied at the outset of restoration planning to provide a sufficient assessment to com
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Inventory and Map Your Land If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. Aldo Leopold
Ecological restoration must begin with understanding the land with an emphasis on determining its ecological health. Rarely will a tract of land have been sufficiently studied at the outset of restoration planning to provide a sufficient assessment to complete the restoration and management planning data form (see appendix 1). More typically, you will start from scratch. This step begins with an overview of how to assess the land then covers the details for evaluating the ecosystems. Land evaluation involves three processes that can be done sequentially, or more or less simultaneously, depending on the size and complexity of the landscape: 1. Identify and map the ecological units (plant communities or cover types if the land is not too disturbed or in agricultural crops). 2. Characterize the communities as to dominant species and location in the landscape with special attention to ecotones and succession. 3. Determine the ecological health of each community or ecosystem. Note: we will refer to either “community” or “ecosystem,” depending on whether the emphasis is on the species pres-
ent (community), or the ecological processes (ecosystem). Each process demands more knowledge and interpretative skill than the previous. Some steps may exceed your knowledge or experience. If so, we offer alternatives but encourage you to keep learning and seek assistance when needed. The first process requires only good observation to delineate the different ecological units present. We use “unit” here because disturbance often disguises the variation in edaphic conditions such as soil, hydrology, and topography that would have led to variation in vegetation patterns. Where vegetation patterns are present, they reveal ecological units. For example, you may see a weedy hillside grading into a wetland at the bottom of the slope. These are different ecological units that you would map. You need not worry about the details of species and variation in soils at this point, but simply look for differences in vegetation, topography, or hydrology that are apparent. Smaller fields, lawns, or vacant lots will generally be mapped as a unit at this stage, especially if you see no natural breaks in topography or hydrology.
S.I. Apfelbaum and A. Haney, The Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land Workbook, The Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-049-1_1, © 2012 Steven I. Apfelbaum and Alan Haney
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the restoring ecological health to your land workbook
Figure 1.1. Ecological units on a simple Wisconsin landscape, Stone Prairie Farm, WI
The aim of the second process is to define and characterize the ecosystems that occupy each unit you have identified. The dominant plants are most often used, but variation in soil and hydrology may also become essential clues, especially if the vegetation has been largely altered by agriculture or development (fig. 1.1). This will r
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