Biodiversity monitoring
Monitoring the plants and animals on your farm can be a fascinating experience. EcoFarms us the iNaturalist citizen science online platform to capture all our biodiversity monitoring data and this serves as a valuable tool for educating landowners and staff about the indigenous (and alien) species on the farm. Monitoring data is captured by partnering with biodiversity assessment specialists, conducting our own assessments and training landowners and staff how to use the iNaturalist App and upload observations. Insights gained from Biodiversity monitoring are used to inform the Ecosystem & Biodiversity Management Plan.
 

Water quality and aquatic health
We map all rivers, streams, wetlands an seeps on the farm and demarcate these riparian and wetland zones on the farm GIS project. Each watercourse is assessed in terms of ecological health (SASS survey, chemical and biological water quality analysis, invasive alien species, species composition of plant communities, seasonal stream flow, etc.) and restoration and remediation management interventions are recommended which feed into the Freshwater and Aquatic Ecosystem Conservation Plan.
 

Biological and chemical soil monitoring
Soil health is the foundation of agricultural production. EcoFarms is busy expanding its soil monitoring capability to make it affordable to for production managers to obtain a higher resolution view of key parameters of ecological soil health in production areas. Each parameter can then be entered as a GIS data point and a heat map can be created which can be spatially compared to related factors and used to inform the Soil Management Plan.
 

Data collection for Environmental Audits
Ensuring that your accounting systems are optimally set up to track the indicators you are required to report on will make environmental audits much less stressful. Similarly filing all documents and verifiable indicators on a shared, online platform is advisable. Our experience assisting clients with their reporting in a wide range of different scenarios can help you to avoid pitfalls and streamline this process.
 

GIS mapping for reporting
Good maps are invaluable tools to illustrate spatial information for reporting purposes. The EcoFarms GIS mapping projects for each of our clients are developed with reporting in mind and we produce professional maps to support audit reports.