Our Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification Process

Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) on TerraMatch

Harit Bharat Fund in India and TerraFund for AFR100 in Africa are setting a new global standard for monitoring restoration implementation. To prove what’s happening on the ground, WRI and our partners have designed practical methods that provide reliable, repeatable and robust data to monitor projects throughout their entire lifecycle.

Funded projects will be required to regularly submit reports every six months on TerraMatch. That data are verified with independent sources of information and site visits to cross-check and confirm the accuracy of reported progress.

Monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) is conducted via TerraMatch, which we use:

1. For project developers to submit three types of reports (site, nursery, and project), along with accurate geospatial boundaries of their planting locations.
2. For WRI to share summary results of progress back to project developers and funders

Funded projects will be expect to report every six months on the indicators listed below, which can be found in all their details within the TerraFund for AFR100 monitoring, reporting, and verification framework, accessible here. WRI and our partners will be operationalizing this framework within the Indian context and improving it in 2024.

Indicators: 

Indicator 1: Number of Trees Restored

Indicator 1.1 Number of trees under restoration

• Description: This indicator combines 2 numbers: the number of trees planted and number of trees grown through assisted natural regeneration practices in planned sites. This indicator represents aggregated number of trees planted, including applied nucleation, and number of trees grown through assisted natural regeneration (e.g. enrichment planting, direct seeding) across sites over a 6-year period. This indicator is updated with the submission of every 6-month progress report, which continues for 6 years after funding is disbursed.
• Importance: This set of numbers, total by site and total by project, is used to understand the progress of project implementation throughout the 6 years.

Indicator 1.2 Number of seedlings or saplings grown in nurseries annually and over a 5-year period

• Description: Number of Seedlings grown in nurseries for tree planting/growing across sites and projects.
• Importance: Nursery tree count is an intermediary progress indicator for the number of trees planted/grown. In the early stages of project implementation, when seedings or saplings have not been planted, projects can still report progress on their seedlings, showing partners and investors that their tree planted/grown target are in progress.

Indicator 1.3 Number of trees counted at Year 0, Year 3, and Year 6 and change in tree count from Year 0 – 6 across all sites

• Description: Remote baseline establishment and evaluation of change in tree count within site areas.
• Importance: The Tropical Tree Cover (TTC) dataset and analyses establish Year 0 tree cover, Year 3 tree cover, Year 6 tree cover, as well as the change in tree canopy cover for all sites in a project. This is an impact indicator that shows the growth of trees over the lifetime of the project. The result can be used for adaptive management. For example, if a project used the same methods in two sites, but have different changes in tree cover percent across the project lifetime, this insight can be used to understand the contributing factors of project success and/or failure (e.g. soil type, aspect, slope, project size, planting month). This protocol generates data on the number of trees of a certain size visible within the plot at Year 0, Year 3, and Year 6, developed from best available satellite data at plot level granularity. The method is used as an independent data source to measure progress towards each project’s tree planting target.

Indicator 1.4 Percent tree cover at Year 0, Year 3, and Year 6 and change in percent tree cover in restored

• Description: Remote baseline establishment and evaluation of change in tree cover within site areas.
• Importance: The protocol describes how to collect tree count data using satellite imagery, and it is used to count trees at three moments in time: Year 0, Year 3, and Year 6. Year 0 is defined as 6 months from the date of the first signed contract in the cohort, Year 3 is 3 years from the date of Year 0, and Year 6 is 6 years from the date of Year 0. For example, if the first signed contract happened on January 1, 2023, then the satellite image used for Year 0 will be the best available satellite data at plot level granularity on or as close as possible to July 1, 2023 and before the planting date. Year 3 would be on July 1, 2026, and Year 6 would be on July 1, 2029. The results generated from this analysis, which is limited to trees that are large enough to be visible in the imagery, will be verified via comparison with available information from 6-month reports, geotagged photos, and drone imagery data.

Indicator 2: Hectares Under Restoration

Indicator 2.1 Hectares under restoration and hectares by intervention

• Description:

  • Hectares under restoration − The total land measured in hectares with active restoration intervention based on polygons and data submitted by projects.

  • Hectares by intervention − The total land measured in hectares with active restoration intervention, disaggregated by intervention.

• Importance: Polygons and related attribute tables are critical to the assessment of impact and indicators 1.3, 1.4, 2, 2.1, and 2.2. They are the basis for generating accurate tree count, tree cover, and data for other indicators within each site area over the lifetime of the project. Polygons are required as input to create Collect Earth Online surveys used to collect tree count, estimate tree cover, and accurately estimate the hectares under restoration and by intervention

Indicator 2.2 10-year lookback analysis

• Description: The lookback analysis reviews land conditions and tree dynamics going back 10 years before the start of the project.
• Importance: Major disturbances may include fire, flood, hurricanes, uncontrolled grazing, pest outbreaks, and intentional clearing. Some disturbances are natural, some are human-driven - and all can cause degradation.

Indicator 3: Number of Jobs Created

• Description: Number of jobs created by the restoration project or enterprise.
• Importance: Investment in forest and landscape restoration is touted for creating jobs in rural areas. Therefore, both demographic information and the number and types of jobs created are necessary to quantify and assess the benefits of restoration projects. Researchers can also use this data to complement additional surveys or focus groups to understand the types and quality of jobs within the restoration sector and which demographic categories benefit from the highest quality and full-time jobs. The information in this indicator is also connected to the livelihoods metrics covered by Indicator 4. 

Indicator 4: Livelihoods Benefits

• Description: The number of people who have reported increased annual income, knowledge, and/or skills
• Importance: The co-benefits of restoration activities are difficult to capture accurately and consistently. Our intention is to simplify the quantification and use contextual narratives to support the number. Ultimately, we aim to showcase that restoration has other benefits beyond tree growth and support project developers to tell that story. We would also like to know how restoration benefits women and other disadvantaged groups in the restoration industry as well as other benefits they want to share such as increased community awareness of restoration efforts, improved knowledge and skills on restoration, improved productivity on farms, access to clean water, improved food security, etc.

Indicator 5: Financial Growth

• Description: Annual change in budget or revenue and net income.
• Importance: Many TerraFund project developers struggle to produce high-quality audited financial statements, which are the backbone of the health of an organization. For small-and-medium enterprises, this is especially important: The lack of a financial statement, where investors can track revenue changes over time, calls into question the ability of that enterprise to pay back any debt or report back to their shareholders. By providing a standard format for all TerraFund recipients to submit their audited financial statements, in addition to profit & loss statements for enterprises, TerraFund can build up the expectation of collecting accurate financial data for growing for-profits and non-profits.

Indicator 6: Carbon Sequestered

• In pilot, coming in Q4 2023.
• Description: Biomass carbon sequestered.
• Importance: Trees outside of forests are an important but often overlooked natural resource throughout sub-Saharan Africa, providing benefits for livelihoods as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation. The development of an individual tree cover map using very high-resolution remote sensing and a comparison with a new automated machine learning mapping product revealed an important contribution of trees outside of forests to landscape tree cover and carbon stocks in a region where trees outside of forests are important components of livelihood systems. The measurement of tree cover and carbon in these landscapes has important applications in climate change mitigation and adaptation policies

Indicator 7: Ecosystem Services Enhanced

• Coming in 2024.
• Description: Restoration is a means to achieve many ecological goals, such as improved hydrological flows, reduced erosion, moderated climate, and increased species diversity; field work is required to measure the long-term effects of restoration years after the project is complete. Based on the intervention, studies could assess the effects of restoration on soil, water, plant and animal diversity, community well-being, food production, energy, and sustainability