Land degradation is an ongoing challenge for Rwanda, which struggles with the effects of unsustainable agricultural practices, increasing energy demands, and overexploitation of forests and woodlands. Rwanda has pledged to restore 2 million hectares as part of its commitments to the Bonn Challenge and the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) and is striving for land degradation neutrality (LDN) by 2030. To achieve these goals, it is vital for Rwanda to create monitoring systems capable of assessing a range of land and soil health indicators at multiple scales. The Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF) and Regreening App are useful tools to build and implement these restoration monitoring systems.

Since 2018, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), World Vision Rwanda, and other partners (hereafter referred to as “the partners”) used LDSF and the Regreening App to monitor soil health and land degradation in the Nyagatare and Kayonza districts of eastern Rwanda. Subsistence farming is a major economic driver in these districts and smallholder croplands are a dominant land use. Both districts have experienced significant soil degradation and the proliferation of non-native tree species like Eucalyptus.

The LDSF was used to create a methodology for integrating field-collected data, laboratory analysis, and remote sensing data from Nyagatare and Kayonza. Farm-level data was collected by farmers using the Regreening App and then uploaded into the LDSF cloud-based platform. The partners selected LDSF because its standardized set of indicators allows results to be comparable across landscapes. The partners used the Regreening App because it enabled farmers to report data that could be integrated into the LDSF database.

The partners worked with smallholder farmers (defined as farmers with holdings of 0.1-0.2 hectares) to monitor restoration activities like tree-planting, farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR), and nursery development. The partners and local NGOs held workshops with farmers to explain the project and train them in data collection and monitoring using the Regreening App.  The partners and the farmers sampled 149 plots on farms in Nyagatare and 151 in Kayonza. Farmers measured indicators including vegetation type, tree density, tree diversity, and erosion prevalence and recorded observations in the Regreening App.

In addition to the indicators measured and reported by the farmers, the partners collected soil samples from the plots. The soil was analyzed in the ICRAF laboratory to determine soil health indicators such as acidity and content of organic carbon, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sodium.

The partners then combined the data measured by the farmers and the soil health indicators with satellite data and indicators from LDSF’s database to assess and monitor soil health and land degradation in the Nyagatare and Kayonza. They found that despite substantial tree planting in the sampled plots, there was a low occurrence of native species, and many cropland areas were dominated by nonnative Eucalyptus species. The partners further found that, in both Nyagatare and Kayonza, there were high levels of acidity and low levels of potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sodium. These soil conditions could limit agricultural productivity.

Additionally, the partners used the LDSF methodology and indicators to create maps that showed soil erosion and soil organic carbon levels in Nyagatare and Kayonza. To highlight hotspots of extreme erosion that require intensive restoration efforts, they created a thirty-meter resolution map of soil erosion across both districts.  The maps showed more severe erosion in woodlands, shrublands, and grasslands than in croplands, which is likely due to the common practice of terracing on croplands and the preferential use of flatter areas for planting.  The maps also helped to identify where there were high and low levels of organic carbon in Nyagatare and Kayonza.  The maps showed that there were lower levels of soil organic carbon in croplands and grasslands than in shrublands and woodlands, and pointed to high-carbon areas in wetlands and forests that are important to protect.

These results were shared with stakeholders including farmers, tree nursery managers, and restoration implementers through workshops conducted by partner organizations. The data collected with the Regreening App and analyzed with the LDSF methodology help to inform stakeholders’ planning and decision-making. Through the ICRAF and World Vision partnership, thousands of farmers in Rwanda are now using the Regreening App and contributing to LDSF’s data. The long-term goal is to continue monitoring in some sites to confirm and strengthen LDSF’s modeling. ICRAF is also interested in using LDSF and the Regreening App to help connect farmers, nursery managers, and other actors with each other.

The LDSF and Regreening App helped ICRAF, World Vision, and their partners to assess soil and landscape health in Nyagatare and Kayonza in a robust, comparable, and holistic manner. Land degradation and restoration are complex, and it is important to have systemic ways of measuring a biophysical baseline and monitoring recovery over time. Such information is vital for helping land managers make decisions about where and how to restore and helping countries like Rwanda achieve their restoration goals.