How to Track Tree Planting and Survival Across Many Sites
Bernat Fortet ·
To track tree planting and survival across many sites, give every number a place, a date and a species, and plan the revisit before the first tree goes in the ground. Survival compares a defined group of trees, the ones you recorded at planting, with how many of them are alive later. If you cannot find that group again, or measure a representative sample of it, you have nothing to compare against.
That takes five pieces:
- A list of sites and planting areas, each with a boundary and an ID people can read out loud.
- Planting records that say what was planted, where, when and by whom.
- A monitoring unit you can return to: individual tagged trees, sample plots, or whole planting areas.
- Repeat observations of that unit, with photos and GPS, on a schedule.
- A review step while the season is still running, so a bad record can be fixed in the field.
The tool matters less than this structure. A spreadsheet and a form app can hold it for a few sites. Across many sites, partners and seasons, the links between records are what break first.
Set up planting and monitoring records before the season
Many survival numbers fail long before anyone counts dead trees. They fail because the planting record and the monitoring record were never linked. Decide the structure first:
| Record | Holds | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Site | Name, owner or partner, boundary, location | Every other record points to a place. |
| Planting area | Boundary, area, planned species and quantities | Lets you compare what was planned with what was planted. |
| Planting event | Date, species, quantity, team, nursery batch | The baseline that survival is measured against. |
| Monitoring unit | Tagged tree, sample plot, or planting area | The thing you will find again next season. |
| Observation | Date, alive or dead, height, condition, photos, GPS | The repeat visit that turns planting into survival. |
Keep the IDs stable. If a plot is called "P3" in one season's spreadsheet and "Plot 3 North" in the next, someone has to reconcile them by hand, and survival rates quietly drift. A hierarchy of data needs for restoration explains why this order matters.
Choose a tree survival monitoring method
Survival is usually measured on tagged trees or sample plots. Remote sensing adds a view of cover across large areas. Many projects combine them.
| Method | Works when… | Plan for… |
|---|---|---|
| Individual tagged trees | Planting is small, high value, or needs tree-level evidence. | Tags that last, GPS points accurate enough to find each tree, and time per tree. |
| Sample plots | Planting is large and you need a statistically useful estimate. | A sampling design you can repeat: permanent plots with markers, or new representative plots each time, with the same protocol. |
| Area-level remote sensing (alongside the two above) | You need canopy or cover change across many hectares. It measures cover, not survival. | Imagery, analysis skills, and field checks; young seedlings are hard to see in most satellite imagery, though high-resolution drone imagery can help in some conditions. |
Whatever you choose, write the definition down. Survival rate is usually the trees still alive from one planting batch divided by the number planted in that batch. Record replanting and natural regrowth separately so they do not inflate it. Agree how replanted trees are handled, what "alive" means for a damaged seedling, and how long after planting each visit happens. A rate is only comparable across sites if every site uses the same rule.
Published frameworks help here. The Tree Restoration Monitoring Framework from Conservation International and WRI, for example, calculates survival by species and lets teams replace early failed plantings without recording deaths, as long as the replacements are not counted as extra trees planted.
For carbon projects, the methodology usually decides. Verra's VM0047 for afforestation, reforestation and revegetation (ARR), for example, has two approaches, and the project's eligibility decides which applies. The area-based approach combines field sample plots with remote sensing that compares the project to matched control areas. The census-based approach, for dispersed planting that does not change land use, counts every planting unit and measures a sample of them. Set up the monitoring records to match the approach before planting starts. See what VM0047 asks the field team to record and how to build monitoring that carbon investors trust.
Plan revisits to the same trees and plots
Field teams find a plot again when their phone gives them:
- The previous observation. The last count, photos and notes for the plot or tree they are visiting.
- The map. Site and plot boundaries with their location, ideally on satellite imagery.
- Offline access. Many planting sites have no signal; the visit cannot depend on one.
- Readable IDs. "Plot 14" can be said over a radio; a 20-character code cannot.
- A form that matches the protocol. The same fields, in the same order, with required answers where the protocol needs them.
Compare form-based and map-based field apps in our guide to field-data apps for reforestation teams.
Check survival data during the season
Survival data is easiest to fix while the team is still near the site. Before the team leaves the area, look for:
- Missing records. A site with planting but no monitoring visit, or a plot with no photos.
- Records in the wrong place. A tree outside its farm, or two planting areas that overlap.
- Numbers that do not add up. More trees alive than were planted, or a survival rate that jumps between visits.
Set these checks up once and run them on every sync, so the list of problems is ready while the work can still change. Four tests for restoration data quality goes deeper on what to check.
Tools for tracking planting and survival
Forms and a spreadsheet. KoboToolbox or ODK forms for planting and monitoring, with a spreadsheet or database to join them. It is low cost and widely used. Linking revisits takes setup, for example with ODK Entities; plan for someone to own the IDs, the links and the cleanup each season.
A GIS project in the field. QGIS with QField or Mergin Maps keeps boundaries and plots on the map, links observations to plots through QGIS relations, and works offline. Plan for a GIS owner to maintain layers, forms and synchronization.
Restoration registries and reporting platforms. Restor maps sites with free ecological data and offers paid monitoring reports and ground-data uploads; TerraMatch runs monitoring for projects in TerraFund and similar programmes. Check how much field-level detail they hold and whether they fit your day-to-day operations, not only your reporting. Our comparison of restoration monitoring tools covers these and more.
A configured restoration platform. Restoration Scope connects nurseries, planting areas, field visits and survival records in one system configured around your project.
Where Restoration Scope fits
We build digital infrastructure for nature projects: we connect a team's field data, maps and workflows, and set the system up hands-on with each team. It suits teams that already run many sites, partners or seasons and find that the links between planting and monitoring are breaking. The records can be configured around individual trees, plots or planting areas, and repeat observations stay linked to the original planting work. You can review survival and maintenance by site, species or season, and use that to plan follow-up visits.
You can keep your existing forms: we connect records from tools such as Kobo and spreadsheets, and configure capture in our field app where that suits the work. The app captures photos, GPS and structured observations offline and syncs when a connection returns. The data platform runs the checks, and geospatial workflows run your team's methods on the same boundaries.
It is not the right first step if a form tool and a spreadsheet already cover your sites, or if nobody on your team can own the workflow. See Restoration Scope for reforestation for how this looks across a season.
A checklist for next season
- List every site and planting area with a boundary and a readable ID.
- Decide your monitoring unit and write down the survival definition.
- Link each planting record to its area, species and date.
- Schedule the revisits and give field teams the previous observation offline.
- Run the same quality checks after every sync, and fix problems before the team leaves the area.