International Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration
Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed. (SER 2004)
WHAT IS THE RECOVERY WHEEL?
The wheel is a tool designed to assist restoration manager in evaluating the degree to which the ecosystem under treatment is recovering over time. This evaluation should be performed comparing the attribute of the degraded system to its reference ecosystem. The evaluation of each attribute is an assessment of the similarity to the reference ecosystem. A practitioner with a high level of familiarity with the goals, objectives and site specific indicators set for the project and the recovery levels achieved to date can assign the value for each sub-attribute after formal or informal evaluation. This evaluation relies on a five star rating system, assigned to 18 sub-attributes, grouped in six main attributes:
Absence of threats
Physical conditions
Species composition
Structural diversity
Ecosystem function
External exchanges
The average of the three sub-attributes per attribute will return the star rating for that attribute.
The average of all attributes will return the summary of recovery outcome.
The five-star recovery wheel is designed to be used with the 5-star criteria listed in Table 4 of the International Standards.
HOW TO USE THE RECOVERY WHEEL?
This interactive version of the Recovery wheel will allow you to automatically populate the wheel
by inserting values on the proforma. You'll be required to record the location, date and name of the person
performing the assessment and then provide 0-5 rating for each sub-attribute. Once the assessments are complete,
by pressing the "Update wheel" button, the wheel will be populated. Average star rating will appear under each
attribute section and the overall star rating appears under the wheel. You can then save the wheel on your computer/smartphone
by clicking on the "Download as image" button.
GO TO THE RECOVERY WHEEL
The recovery wheel is also available in Excel format.
