Developing a Protocol for Assessing Natural Area Function in Portland, Oregon

The Revegetation Program at the City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services aims to use active adaptive management to steward natural areas in our portfolio, but we have lacked an adequate monitoring protocol to effectively implement this approach. We spent three years developing and testing a functional assessment protocol to assess progress toward management goals and to infer performance of different ecological functions. We completed our first data collection during the field season of 2022.

In a nutshell, this resource offers:

• Background on developing a protocol for assessing natural area function
• Examples of goals and metrics in assessment. 
• Lessons learned from the first two field seasons of the assessment protocol. 

How to use this resource:

• As a case study for developing an assessment protocol. 
• As a list of question that need to be answered for each protocol.
• As a specific example of a protocol and its results. 

Author: Christa von Behren, City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services

Date published: 2024

Point of contact: Christa von Behren christa.vonbehren@portlandoregon.gov

Citation: von Behren, Christa (2024) "Developing a Protocol for Assessing Natural Area Function in Portland, Oregon," Cities and the Environment (CATE): Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 38. DOI: 10.15365/cate.2020.130138 

Resource is available online here.