NCGS Glossary
The formally defined terms of the Nova Community Greening Standard, including its covered activity types.
Key terms: the words the standard uses, each with the words it avoids.
Activity type · Agreement status · Anchor event · Approved claim · Assessor · Conformance statement · Consignment · Distinguishable · Education session · Establishment rate · Explanatory material · Horizon-bounded claim · Identifier contract · Knowledge domain · Methodology · Monitoring period · Monitoring visit · Named condition · Normative corpus · Observation · Observation horizon · Observer · Outcome domain · People register · Personal field · Planting rate · Project design · Project journey · Project version · Review seat · Safeguard · Site · Site assessment · Site preparation · Site type · Standard version · Stewardship · Stratum · Suitability criterion · Suitability determination · Survival rate · Tag · Tree delivery · Tree individual · Tree planting · Unobserved · Unscheduled observation · Withheld, verified
Activity type
One of seven kinds of thing an agent does at a site on a date and produces a record for: site assessment, site preparation, tree delivery, tree planting, environmental education, stewardship, monitoring visit. Each has its own activity class and data requirement. A safeguard decision is the output of a site assessment, not an activity; household participation is a site type plus the owner role, not an activity.
Avoid: intervention, phase, work package
Avoid: work package (a budget term).
Agreement status
Where the landowner’s agreement to planting stands: none, requested, signed, refused, uncooperative, withdrawn, or withdrawn with trees on site. Derived from the site’s agreement acts, never captured; a rule about a past record reads the status in force at that record’s time. A precondition on assessment and planting, never a suitability criterion. A funder or implementing partner may be responsible for obtaining agreements.
Avoid: approval, consent, permission
Avoid: consent (a POPIA term).
Anchor event
The event a horizon is measured from: a tree individual’s planting date, a consignment’s delivery date, or a site’s first assessment date.
Avoid: baseline date, start date
Avoid: baseline date (T0 is a horizon, not the anchor).
Approved claim
A state or impact claim whose reviewing workflow ended in APPROVED. The substance of every NCGS result; a report is a query over approved claims.
Avoid: certified result, verified value
Avoid: verified value (when the claim is meant).
Assessor
The observer who completes a site assessment: a fieldworker or supervisor. Only a supervisor may override the derived determination, with a written reason.
Avoid: evaluator, inspector, reviewer
Avoid: reviewer (a different role).
Conformance statement
The one artifact NCGS issues: a statement per project version that the design was validated and monitoring verified at named horizons. A statement of process, never a certificate of impact. Issued by Independent Impact as a verifiable credential.
Avoid: impact certificate, token, verified impact certificate
Avoid: verified impact certificate (a NIAS artifact).
Consignment
A quantity of trees of stated species and container size handed over to a recipient at a site on a date, with a signed acknowledgement in which the recipient confirms the quantity of living trees received. The record produced by delivery; it contains no tree individuals, and dead stock is never counted as delivered.
Avoid: batch, order
Core set
The collection of the fifteen indicators a 2026 project under the standard reports, all approved and each served by an approved methodology whose records exist.
Distinguishable
The state of a tree that can be told apart from its consignment mates: tagged, planted at a recorded position, or observed. A tree individual is created at this moment and points back to its consignment.
Avoid: allocated, registered
Earliest horizon
The first observation horizon at which a value of an indicator may be claimed, stated on the indicator where its meaning needs one. A design may target the indicator only if its monitoring plan reaches that horizon for some stratum (ADR-0012).
Education session
One environmental education workshop or session, hosted at a site and covering the sites whose stewards attended; the unit of observation of the education indicators.
Environmental education
A workshop or session at a site that teaches tree care and environmental stewardship, with an attendance register.
Establishment rate
Tree individuals observed alive and thriving at T3 divided by tree individuals planted. Outcome level; stricter than survival.
Avoid: survival, take rate
Avoid: survival (when thriving is meant).
Explanatory material
Anything that describes the standard without deciding conformance: the summary site, the ADRs, the design documents and reports. It may paraphrase a rule of the normative corpus and must point to it, but never adds one; a rule found only in explanatory material is a defect in the material.
Avoid: documentation, guidance, informative annex
Avoid: guidance (which suggests a softer rule); documentation (for the corpus).
Horizon-bounded claim
The rule that an indicator value or impact claim at a horizon the monitoring period does not reach is refused, not warned about. Later horizons are reported as unobserved.
Avoid: expected impact, modelled outcome, projected value
Household participation
A programme component in which households plant, own and care for trees on their own stands. Not an activity type: it is the household-stand site type plus the owner role plus the activities every other site has.
Identifier contract
The rule every tree individual, site, consignment and observation must meet: a urn:uuid: version 4 IRI, assigned at the moment the thing first becomes individually distinguishable and never before, stable for life, resolving to exactly one physical thing. The standard prescribes the contract, never how an app mints the value.
Avoid: reserved ID, tree ID, tree number
Avoid: tag (for the identity).
Knowledge domain
One of ten areas in which an agent earns Knowledge and Skills Reputation under NCGS: site suitability assessment; grassland and wetland ecology; field survey and data capture; field team supervision; local area knowledge; indigenous species selection and planting practice; tree establishment and stewardship; community engagement and environmental education; impact evaluation and estimation; carbon accounting for afforestation.
Avoid: competency area, qualification, skill set
Methodology
An approved way of producing one or more indicators from observations: definition, principles, methods, data requirements, calculation rules, outputs, validation and verification approach, limitations and rationale, plus the variables it reads and the monitoring requirement it imposes. May serve several indicators; each must be computable from its variables.
Avoid: approach, method, protocol
Avoid: protocol (fine for a field procedure inside one); method (unqualified).
Module
An optional curated collection of indicators and the methodologies serving them, beyond the core set. A project design adopts a module’s indicators one by one under the membership rule; nothing references a module as a whole (ADR-0011, ADR-0015).
Monitoring period
The time:Interval a project design declares for its observations. A horizon may be claimed only if its window can be reached inside this period; extending it is a new design version, never an edit.
Avoid: M&E phase, contract period, project duration
Monitoring visit
A visit to a site at a declared observation horizon in which each tree individual is observed.
Named condition
A concrete thing that must happen before planting, recorded on a suitable-with-conditions determination; each becomes a precondition on the planting step.
Avoid: caveat, remark
Normative corpus
The released Turtle, shapes and registers of one standard version. It alone decides whether a record or a project conforms; where anything else disagrees with it, the corpus is right.
Avoid: source of truth, the rules, the spec
Avoid: the rules (for the files).
Observation
A record of the state of one tree individual (or one site) made by one observer at one moment, carrying observation-level evidence. An aiao:StateClaim whose subject is the tree’s state at that moment; the unit that indicators are computed from.
Avoid: data point, measurement, reading, survey
Avoid: survey (for a single record); measurement (when the whole record is meant).
Observation horizon
One of six concepts, T0 to T5, each with a minimum and maximum offset in days from an anchor event: T0 baseline (−365 to 0), T1 four weeks (21 to 28), T2 early establishment (60 to 120), T3 one year (300 to 430), T4 two to three years (700 to 1100), T5 five years on (1825 upward). An observation declares its horizon; one whose date falls outside the window is an unscheduled observation.
Avoid: monitoring round, month 3, visit number
Avoid: month 3 (as the identifier).
Observer
The agent who made an observation, identified by IRI and distinct from whoever later submits the artifact containing it.
Avoid: author, enumerator, submitter
Avoid: enumerator (use fieldworker).
Outcome domain
One of twelve flat domains in which greening produces value, each aligned to SDG targets: well-being and quality of place; green-space access and amenity; biodiversity and ecosystem integrity; climate resilience; climate mitigation; water and soil; food and nutrition; local economy and livelihoods; education and stewardship; equity and inclusion; governance and persistence; learning and scalability. An indicator carries one or more.
Avoid: SDG, impact area, pillar, theme
Avoid: SDG (as the domain itself).
People register
The implementing partner’s access-controlled list, kept beside the project ledger, of everyone enrolled in a project: their register key or login, agent identifier, roles and the contact details the work needs. It reaches fieldworkers through the instrument’s cases; it is never part of the ledger or the NCGS graph, and an entry can be deleted on request (ADR-0007).
Avoid: CRM, contact list, project database
Avoid: project database (for the list of people).
Personal field
A form field whose answer is personal data, such as a name, phone number or login, marked as such in the instrument’s mapping. The instrument captures it and keeps it in its cases or the people register; the project ledger records only that it was answered, and the NCGS graph never holds it. The ban on personal data scales with how immutable a store is: allowed on the device and in the people register, never in the ledger or the graph.
Avoid: PII field, private field, sensitive field
Planting rate
Tree individuals planted at a site, whoever planted them (the implementing partner through a planting record, or the owner or steward registering their own planting), ÷ the living trees the recipients confirmed receiving in the consignments handed over at that site. Output level. The denominator is the living trees delivered, because a tree never planted never becomes a tree individual (ADR-0003), and dead stock is a shortfall of the delivery, not of the site.
Avoid: conversion, uptake
Project design
The document a project files before acting, in eight sections: identity, objective and scope, parties by role, sites with their latest determinations, indicators and methodologies, monitoring plan, safeguards and stakeholder engagement, personal-data handling. Validated before registration; a new version for any change of scope or monitoring period.
Avoid: PDD, plan, proposal
Avoid: PDD (fine in prose); proposal (the funder document); plan (unqualified).
Project journey
The path a project version follows under the standard. Registration opens it and close-out ends it, once each; between them every site runs its own path: assessment, then withheld or delivery, then planting, then monitoring at the declared horizons. Trees at one site may end in different strata: a delivered-only tree leaves at delivery, a planted tree continues through planting, and only a monitored tree reaches monitoring and verification. Education and stewardship recur alongside planted sites and are not stages in the sequence.
Avoid: lifecycle, pipeline, process
Avoid: lifecycle (which is the tree’s); process (for the whole path).
Project version
A validated state of a project design. Extending the monitoring period, changing strata or adding sites makes a new version, never an edit.
Avoid: amendment, revision
Review seat
A place in a review that an agent may take. Every NCGS seat is open to any agent whose KSR in the required knowledge domains meets the rule; none is reserved for the standards body. The reviewer is never the observer who made the record.
Avoid: accredited reviewer, appointed reviewer, panel
Safe space
A site where the conditions for a tree to survive exist: water, a caretaker and security, per the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.
Safeguard
A decision not to plant, or to change what is planted, taken to avoid harm to an intact ecosystem such as Highveld grassland or a wetland. A success of the programme, never a shortfall.
Avoid: constraint, exclusion, non-delivery
Site
The place where tree individuals stand or are delivered to, and the mandatory container of every tree. Institutional, public or a household stand.
Avoid: beneficiary, location, plot, property
Avoid: location (when the container is meant); beneficiary (for the place).
Site assessment
A first-class activity in which an assessor visits one site, records its state, scores the suitability criteria and records a suitability determination. Every assessed site gets a record, suitable or not. Instances are typed ncgs:SiteAssessmentActivity.
Avoid: screening, site visit, validation
Avoid: site visit (the means, not the activity); validation (a review term).
Site designation
The office’s decision which stratum a site’s trees are in: delivered only, planted without monitoring, or planted with monitoring. Made at the desk with who decided and when; a planted tree’s stratum is derived from it, never asked in the field (ADR-0029).
Site preparation
The activity of making a site ready to plant: holes dug at planned positions, soil amended, stakes, guards or fencing installed. Creates the positions tree individuals are planted into and is evidenced per hole.
Avoid: groundwork, pre-planting
Site type
The kind of place a site is: school, clinic or public facility, community open space, place of worship, ECD centre, smallholder farm, district education office, household stand, verge.
Avoid: category, land use
Avoid: land use (which is land cover).
Standard version
The semantic version of the whole NCGS corpus, the same on every artifact of a release. A project is validated against one standard version and stays on it until re-validated.
Avoid: edition, release date
Avoid: release date (as the identifier).
Stewardship
The ongoing care of tree individuals: watering, mulching, pruning, fertilising, protection, replacing stakes. One activity type whoever performs it; the observer role says who.
Avoid: aftercare, caretaking, maintenance
Avoid: aftercare (as separate types).
Stratum
Which of three evidence tiers a tree is in: delivered only, planted without monitoring, planted with monitoring. A state of the tree, visible in every claim, never a label on the project.
Avoid: category, group, phase
Suitability criterion
One of eight conditions scored met, not met or unknown at a site assessment, each with a note and a photo. Safe-space criteria: water, caretaker, security, soil and ground, space and services, access. Ecological criteria: land cover and biome, ecological appropriateness. Landowner agreement is a precondition, not a criterion.
Avoid: checklist item, factor, requirement
Suitability determination
The output of a site assessment: the single concept stating whether and how the site may be planted. “Planting withheld on ecological grounds” is one determination and a positive result.
Avoid: approval, failed site, rejection, verdict
Survival rate
Tree individuals observed alive at a horizon ÷ the tree individuals planted at that site on the day of planting that were observed at that horizon, never adjusted for replacements. Unobserved trees leave both sides and their count is reported alongside. Calculated over the planted-with-monitoring stratum from T1 onwards; unscheduled observations never count. Outcome level.
Avoid: mortality, success rate
Avoid: mortality (state the survival, not its complement).
Tag
An optional physical label fixed to a tree, printed with its tag number and a QR code. The QR code carries the tag number alone (the value of ncgs:tagNumber, one token without spaces), not a URL, a label or the tree’s UUID, so that a form’s scan resolves to the same value a fieldworker types. The tag is the bearer of the identity, never the identity itself; fixing a tag is one way a tree becomes distinguishable.
Avoid: label, tree ID
Tree delivery
The event at which custody of a consignment of trees passes to a recipient at a site. A delivered-only tree supports output claims only.
Avoid: distribution, handover
Tree individual
One physical tree, the primary unit of observation for survival, condition and growth. Belongs to exactly one site. Created when it first becomes individually distinguishable (ADR-0003).
Avoid: planting, sapling, seedling, tree
Avoid: tree (unqualified, when the class is meant).
Tree planting
The activity of planting tree individuals at recorded positions within a site with the intention that they survive.
Unobserved
A tree individual with no observation at a horizon. Not dead: excluded from both numerator and denominator of that horizon’s rates, with the count reported alongside.
Avoid: lost, missing, presumed dead
Unscheduled observation
An observation the monitoring plan did not schedule: a planted tree outside the planted-with-monitoring stratum, a monitored tree at a horizon the monitoring period does not reach or at an offset outside every horizon’s window, or a delivered-only tree. Welcome, never refused: kept when its content and evidence conform, marked unscheduled, reported separately from scheduled results, and never counted in a rate, which is calculated only over what the plan scheduled.
Avoid: ad hoc observation, extra observation, opportunistic observation, spot check
Withheld, verified
The terminal state of a site-assessment workflow in which a withheld determination, carrying intact land cover, the vegetation code, at least two geotagged ground-cover photos and the assessor’s reason, has been reviewed by someone with knowledge in grassland and wetland ecology who is not the assessor.
Avoid: closed, declined, rejected