Ground cover

This Ground cover indicator and all other indicators in the Land Manager’s Monitoring Guide series are provided in PDF format to allow you to either read it on the screen, or from a version that you print, that can be used in the field as a reference to guide your monitoring activities.

Content for the Ground cover indicator follows the heading structure below:

• What is it?
• Why monitor this indicator?
• Planning monitor this indicator
• How do I measure it?
• Level 1 monitoring
• Level 2 monitoring
• How to record your results
• What does your data mean?
• What are some management options?
• Other information sources
• Glossary
• References
• Acknowledgments
• Downloads

To decide if you want to download the Ground cover indicator, read the following introductory information that describes what it is and why you would use it.

What is it?

Ground cover is provided by living or dead plants and any of their parts that fall to the surface of the ground. Cover may also be provided by pebbles and rocks or a crust of cryptogamic materials (plant life without ‘true’ flowers and seeds, such as mosses, lichens and fungi). Groundcover may be considered as being anything below your eye level that intercepts a vertically falling raindrop.

Ground cover has a number of important functions relating to productivity and environmental health:

• It prevents water erosion by absorbing the impact of falling raindrops that may otherwise cause the soil surface to seal and contribute to excessive runoff.
• It reduces the velocity of runoff and encourages it to spread out rather than to concentrate and develop into an erosive force. Organic matter (including animal dung) and soil can be deposited when overland flow is obstructed by surface cover. Such accumulations are referred to as ‘sinks’ or ‘fertile patches’ (Tongway 1994) where the additional water and nutrients provide an improved environment for plants to germinate and grow.
• It prevents erosion from wind by reducing the wind velocity adjacent to the soil surface and provides an effective barrier between the soil and the air above it.
• It moderates the temperature on the soil surface and helps to reduce evaporation rates from the soil surface.
• It is a natural habitat and food source for a wide variety of living organisms and is used to assess and monitor the health of native vegetation.
• It allows for the recycling of nutrients as plant products are allowed to decompose and nutrients are returned to the soil.

Why monitor this indicator

Monitoring ground cover can:

• Help you assess the degree of risk of land degradation occurring
• Determine landscapes that are already in a degraded condition

At the catchment scale, an overall indication of ground cover can be used as an assessment of catchment health and the vulnerability of the land to soil erosion and its associated impact on water quality.

Downloads

Ground cover measurement is an important component of assessing the health of a landscape from a biodiversity viewpoint. When making observations for biodiversity purposes, we are interested in the different components that make up ground cover, rather than the total amount of cover.

From this page you can download the following files:

• The print-friendly version of this indicator (PDF, 224 kB*) that contains a copy of all the pages from the ground cover section of the Land Manager's Monitoring Guide.
• Datasheets for levels 1, 2a and 2b monitoring of the ground cover indicator have been provided below as portable document format (PDF), zipped files (ZIP) and executable Excel files (EXE). These datasheets will help you to record and analyse your monitoring data and include metadata sheets, field recording sheets, spreadsheets and example data and charts.
  • Datasheets for level 1 monitoring (PDF, 20 kB*)(ZIP, 75 kB)(EXE, 7 kB). 
  • Datasheets for level 2a monitoring (PDF, 47 kB*)(ZIP, 77 kB)(EXE, 9 kB). 
  • Datasheets for level 2b monitoring (PDF, 17 kB*)(ZIP, 73 kB)(EXE, 5 kB). 

*Requires Adobe Reader 

If you experience any difficulty downloading or accessing the materials within the Land Manager's Monitoring Guide please contact the LMMG Team.

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