Indicators
What can be claimed, by stratum and horizon
A cell lists the indicators claimable for trees in that stratum at that observation horizon. Output indicators carry no horizon. A number in a cell refers to the rule under the table that it follows.
The numbers refer to these rules from the project design shapes:
- An outcome-level or impact-level indicator may be targeted only when a monitored stratum, planted with monitoring or delivered with monitoring, that the indicator’s data structure admits has an indicative count above zero: a delivery-only project cannot design for survival or its consequences, nor a planting-only one for the uptake of handed-over trees (ADR-0003, ADR-0012, ADR-0031).
- An indicator with an earliest horizon may be targeted only if the monitoring plan reaches that horizon, or a later one, for some stratum: a design cannot promise establishment, shade or carbon inside a period that never gets there (ADR-0012).
- No horizon is planned for the delivered-only stratum: a delivered-only tree supports output claims only (ADR-0003, ADR-0012).
The full table, with the claims not broken down by stratum and the definitions of every stratum and horizon, is on What can be claimed.
NCGS Result Levels
Input, activity, output, outcome, impact. Trees planted is an output; survival an outcome; shade, food, habitat and carbon are impacts, each needing its own evidence.
Inputs
Resources the programme brings: funding, tree stock, water, a steward, a site with agreement.
- Sites with a signed site agreement (count): The number of registered sites whose agreement status is signed and whose signed agreement is recorded as an evidence item with its signatory and date: a photographed site agreement, an on-screen signature or a recorded consent. A verbal agreement never counts here (ADR-0030). An input: the landowner agreement is a precondition of planting under the adjusted scope, never a suitability criterion.
- Sites with a verbal agreement (count) (Provisional): The number of registered sites whose agreement status is agreed verbally: the landowner, site manager or owner agreed by word only, as the observer noted, with nothing signed or recorded. Counted apart from signed agreements, and never added to them (ADR-0030). Provisional while the standard gathers how designs use verbal agreement.
- Sites with an identified caretaker (count): The number of assessed sites whose latest site assessment scores the caretaker criterion as met: a person or body has undertaken to care for the trees, recorded as an agent in a role, never by name (ADR-0007). An input: stewardship is arranged before planting.
- Sites with confirmed water access (count): The number of assessed sites whose latest site assessment scores the water criterion as met, with the criterion’s evidence. An input: water for establishment is a precondition of planting, not a result of it.
Activities
Work done: site assessment, species selection, planting, training, maintenance, monitoring.
- Environmental education sessions held (count): The number of environmental education session records with at least one curriculum element taught, attendance above zero, an anchored attendance register and a photograph. A regional workshop is one session covering several sites.
- Monitoring visits conducted (count): The number of monitoring visit records with at least one tree observation, whether or not the visit declares a horizon. A visit outside every window counts as a visit; it supports no horizon-bounded claim.
- Unscheduled observations recorded (count): The number of conformant tree observations the monitoring plan did not schedule: of a delivered-only tree, of a planted tree outside the planted-with-monitoring stratum, at a horizon the monitoring period does not reach, or at an offset outside the declared horizon’s window or with no horizon declared. Reported beside scheduled results, never inside them; never a design target and never in a conformance statement.
Outputs
A state produced directly by an activity: a tree planted, a consignment acknowledged, a site assessed, planting withheld.
- Attendees at environmental education sessions (count): The number of people who attended environmental education sessions, as the sum of the sessions’ audience counts by type. A count of attendance, never a list of people; the same person at two sessions counts twice.
- Care actions recorded (count): The number of care actions performed on tree individuals, counted per tree and action from stewardship records: a record of watering and mulching three trees is six. A whole-site record counts one per tree at the site. Stewardship made visible before it shows in survival.
- Households that received trees (count): The number of household-stand sites at which at least one consignment was handed over to a recipient in the owner role, with the recipient’s acknowledgement. A household is counted once however many consignments it received; it is a site, never a person (ADR-0007).
- Planting rate (percent): Tree individuals planted at a site, whoever planted them, divided by the living trees the recipients confirmed receiving in the acknowledged consignments at that site, as a percentage. A tree individual counts as planted when it carries a planting date, whether a planting record by the implementing partner names it or its owner or steward registered their own planting; 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. Rolled up by summing numerators and denominators, never by averaging.
- Plantings withheld on ecological grounds (count): The number of sites whose filed suitability determination is withheld on ecological grounds and whose safeguard review is approved. A positive result of the programme: intact indigenous grassland, wetland or riparian ground left unplanted.
- Record-completeness rate of planting records (percent): Tree individuals named by planting records at a site whose record carries the full required field set (species from the register, planting position, planting date, photograph, and an observer in role on the record) divided by all tree individuals named by planting records at that site, as a percentage. An output about the quality of the field data, not about the trees.
- Sites assessed with a suitability determination (count): The number of sites for which a site assessment record with a filed suitability determination exists, whatever the determination, except a deferral for want of agreement (det-deferred-agreement): that site could not be assessed. Each site counts once, however often it is re-assessed.
- Trees delivered and acknowledged (count): The number of living trees the recipient confirms having received in the lines of consignments whose recipient has signed an acknowledgement: the sum of living trees confirmed over those lines. Dead stock is never counted as delivered. A count of stock whose custody passed at delivery (ADR-0003); it says nothing about planting or survival.
- Trees lost in delivery (count): For each acknowledged consignment and each species and container size on it or on the dispatch it received, the trees sent minus the living trees the recipient confirms having received, summed. The trees sent are the dispatch’s for that species and size when it has them, otherwise the consignment line’s own quantity; living trees confirmed are zero for a species and size the consignment does not list, so a line packed and never delivered counts in full. It covers stock dead on arrival and stock lost between nursery and site, and is attributed to the delivery, never to the site.
- Trees planted, verified and geolocated (count): The number of tree individuals created by planting records at a site: each with a species or cultivar from the register, a planting position, a planting date and a photograph. An output: it says nothing about survival.
Outcomes
A persistent state difference following an output over time: survival, establishment, stewardship persisting.
- Establishment rate at T3 or later (percent): Tree individuals observed alive and thriving at T3 or a later horizon divided by tree individuals planted, as a percentage, unobserved excluded from both sides. Stricter than survival: it requires the thriving condition class. Undefined at T1 and T2. Scheduled observations of the planted-with-monitoring stratum only (ADR-0020).
- Knowledge score change per education session (difference of means): The mean knowledge score after an environmental education session minus the mean score before it, over the same knowledge items, per session. An outcome of the session on what its audience knows; aggregates only, never a person’s score (ADR-0007).
- Living trees with mulch cover (count): The number of tree individuals observed alive on a visit at a horizon whose mulch cover is well or slightly covered, never no cover. An outcome of care: mulch is applied at planting and renewed by the steward.
- Planting uptake at T0+ (percent): Trees delivered with monitoring observed in the ground at the T0+ planting check, divided by the trees the recipient acknowledged at handover in the stand’s consignment lines, as a percentage. A tree not reached at T0+ counts against uptake: the frame is the acknowledged consignment, not the trees observed. A planting check, never a survival rate (ADR-0031).
- Stem diameter of living trees at horizon (centimetres): The stem diameter at breast height of a living tree individual measured on a visit at T3 or later, reported per tree and summarised per site, species and place. An outcome of growth; the input every carbon estimate rests on.
- Stewards practising a taught skill (percent): Tree individuals whose steward or owner attended an environmental education session covering the tree’s site and whose stewardship records include a care action that session taught, divided by tree individuals whose steward or owner attended such a session, as a percentage. The join runs from the curriculum element to the care action it teaches, as data. Rolled up by summing.
- Stewardship persistence at horizon (percent): Tree individuals in the planted-with-monitoring stratum with at least one stewardship record whose offset from planting falls inside the declared horizon’s window, divided by the tree individuals observed at that horizon, as a percentage. Unobserved trees leave both sides. Rolled up by summing numerators and denominators, never by averaging. The denominator counts scheduled observations only (ADR-0020).
- Survival of delivered trees against handover (percent): Trees delivered with monitoring observed alive at a declared horizon from T1, divided by the trees the recipient acknowledged at handover in the stand’s consignment lines, as a percentage. A tree not observed counts against survival: the frame is the acknowledged consignment. Horizons run from the handover date (ADR-0031).
- Survival rate at horizon (percent): Tree individuals observed alive at a declared horizon divided by the tree individuals planted at that site on the day of planting that were observed at that horizon, as a percentage: unobserved trees leave both numerator and denominator and their count is reported alongside. The frame is the planting-day trees, never adjusted for replacements. Rolled up across sites by summing numerators and denominators, never by averaging site rates. Calculated over the planted-with-monitoring stratum from T1 onwards; unscheduled observations never count (ADR-0020).
- Tree individuals alive at horizon (count): The number of tree individuals observed alive at a declared observation horizon. One observation per tree per visit; a tree with no observation at the horizon is unobserved and counted separately, never as dead. Scheduled observations of the planted-with-monitoring stratum only (ADR-0020).
- Tree individuals by condition class at horizon (count): The number of tree individuals observed in each condition class (thriving, some stress, serious stress, pest damage, dead) at a declared horizon. The condition axis is the tree-conditions scheme; the counts over all classes equal the trees observed.
- Trees bearing fruit in the recent season (count): The number of living fruit-tree individuals at a household stand or site that bore fruit in the most recent season, as the owner answers on the household benefit survey (NCGS-M010) for each fruit tree the visit observed alive. An outcome of establishment for fruit species.
- Trees dead by cause of death (count): The number of tree individuals observed dead on a visit at a horizon, by the cause of death the observer recorded from the mortality-causes scheme. An outcome about why trees were lost; the complement of survival, disaggregated by cause.
Impacts
A downstream benefit a persistent outcome produces: shade, food, habitat, carbon, quality of place.
- Canopy cover change at site (square metres): The shade area of a site’s living trees at T4 or later minus the site’s baseline canopy, the shade area at T0 or, where no baseline visit was made, zero for trees planted by the project. An impact of the planting on the place, reported per site and place.
- Ecological appropriateness rate (percent): Assessed sites whose latest filed determination was respected (a withheld site with no planting record; a cleared site planted, or handed over only; and likewise any site not cleared, unsuitable or deferred, with no planting record) divided by assessed sites, as a percentage. An impact of the safeguard on the ground: the share of the portfolio where the ecological judgement governed what happened.
- Households sharing or selling fruit (count): The number of household-stand sites whose owner reports on the household benefit survey that fruit from the programme’s trees was shared with others or sold in the most recent season. An impact on food and livelihoods; a site, never a person (ADR-0007).
- Households with a living tree (count): The number of household-stand sites at which at least one tree individual the programme handed over or planted is observed alive at T2 or later. An impact on the household: it has a tree, not a receipt; a site, never a person (ADR-0007). Counted by the census (NCGS-M001) from the visit’s own observations; no survey is needed. Most household trees are handed over and monitored in the delivered-with-monitoring stratum, whose horizons run from the handover date (ADR-0031).
- Shade area of living trees (square metres): The sum over living tree individuals at a site of the crown area computed from the two canopy axes measured on a monitoring visit at T4 or later, as an ellipse. An impact: the shade a site has because its trees persisted, never projected from a count of trees planted.
- Survival-adjusted carbon stock of living trees (tonnes CO2e, unit TONNE) (Provisional): The carbon stock in the above-ground biomass of the living tree individuals at a site at T3 or later, from each tree’s measured stem diameter through the allometric equation NCGS-M005 states, converted to CO2 equivalent; survival-adjusted because only trees observed alive count. An impact of persistence, never of planting; provisional until the carbon module’s design sections exist.