Scoping Intervention Type

The nature of action on the field site is the intervention type, and can be classed into 3 broad areas:

1. Protection

2. Restoration

3. Management

Protection

Protection covers preservation of existing ecosystems and the services they provide, by way of establishing Protected Areas or Reserves, etc. This could extend to actions such as removal certain threats to the protected area, but overall, not net gain or loss in the ecosystem under protection is expected.

In case of protection, as no change is expected, monitoring is done to largely confirm status quo is maintained. You may wish to establish as part of your project the benefits that are retained by the downstream communities by contributing to protection -- such as amount of clean water available to communities due to continued existence of the ecosystem. The section on 'Modeling' in this manual begins to outline some options you may want to consider. There are number of models that can be used to estimate this but coming up with numbers that are credible and defensible isn't that easy. Our basic guidance here is that unless a project requires this kind of information, say for a water fund or an economic valuation - It may not be worth the effort, given the large uncertainties with these models. So, it's typically going to be better to avoid overclaiming freshwater benefits, particularly if the project was not designed specifically to improve freshwater health.

Restoration

In its 1992 report on Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems by the National Research Council (USA), restoration has been defined as the "return of an ecosystem to a close approximation of its condition prior to disturbance." Restoration covers the manipulation of the physical, chemical, or biological characteristics of a site with the goal of returning natural/historic functions to former or degraded ecosystem.

Active restoration will give rise to several parameters that maybe of interest for monitoring. By focusing on the ecosystem being restored, we aim to narrow down the range of parameters that may need to be considered.

Management

Ecosystem management is managing areas at various scales in such a way that ecological services and biological resources are conserved while appropriate human uses are sustained. A specific example of this is the Sustainable Landscape Approach at Conservation International. Under the sustainable landscape approach, essential natural capital is maintained by promoting the use of best practices in production, planning and local decision-making processes to ensure the healthy provision of ecosystem services and the improvement of human well-being. Over the long run, a sustainable landscape is characterized by zero net deforestation, with all land under some form of management regime, leading to quantifiable improvements in local human well-being. This includes sustainably-financed protection of essential natural capital and development of sustainable production areas.

Management has the potential to influence multiple parameters linked to freshwater benefits, primarily among them being sediment and nutrient loss. Water balance and baseflow may be influenced depending on the size of the intervention and the sensitivity of the region for water scarcity and droughts.