Carry out a preliminary zonation
What is a zonation?
Zonation refers to the process of dividing an area into different zones that have distinct characteristics. Given the distinct characteristics inside a Project Area, such as vegetation biomass, land use, levels of conservation and degradation, different intervention strategies might be needed to drive ecological restoration.
Performing a zonation, serves to group areas with similar characteristics into zones, allowing each zone to receive the most adapted intervention strategy. For detailed orientation on how to perform zonation, refer to the Zonation Guidelines.
Types of zones
The number of zones will depend on the specificities of each Project. However, all zones must fall within one of the following categories:
- Restoration site: zone(s) that will receive restoration intervention (e.g. active manual planting). All restoration zones combined make up the Restoration Site, when designing the shapefile on the App, mark restoration zones as “Restoration Site”.
- Reference site: the site hosting the selected reference ecosystem, that will serve as a model to guide the Project’s Restoration Plan and its carbon sequestration potential.
- Exclusion zone: zone(s) falling inside the Project Area but that will not receive restoration interventions (e.g. a zone within the Project Area that will be used as a nursery or for subsistence agriculture). Indicating exclusion zones is important so that they are not considered when calculating the carbon sequestration potential.
- Leakage area: zone(s) within the Project Area that will be displaced to new areas (inside or outside of the Project), generating deforestation or degradation to some extent (e.g. one zone that will receive restoration interventions is currently being used for cropping, if this cropping will continue but will be displaced to another zone, ERS requires it to be indicated in the Project’s zonation).
- Leakage displacement area: zone(s) to which leakage activities will be displaced to. In some cases, when a leakage area has been identified it is also possible to determine where the area will be displaced to, which can be inside or outside the Project Area. If during certification this is not known yet, it can be left blank and will be reassessed at a later stage.
- Pre-submission activities: zones that have been subject to tests or activities (e.g. planting or ground preparation) before the Project was submitted for certification to ERS.