A photo point is a simple but really effective tool for monitoring progress on your ecological restoration site. Before and after photos can motivate volunteers, demonstrate impact to your local community and be used as evidence when applying for or reporting on grants. Landcare Tasmania provide a great description of how to set up a photo point: Photo Monitoring your Restoration Project – Landcare Tasmania.
Other monitoring methods include seasonal flora and fauna surveys. This could be as simple as taking a quarterly “emu walk” criss-crossing selected parts of your site and noting down the different plant species you observe. You could also note whether they are rare, occasional, frequent or common. You could schedule a monthly 30 minutes of bird-watching and listening for calls from a fixed point at dawn. You could also check for and photograph animal scratches and scats on and around habitat trees on site. Include a scale object or tape measure in the close-up photos.
Keeping a weed map to track weeds encountered and weeds dealt with can help you make decisions about priority zones for follow-up treatment. This could be hand-drawn on a printed topographic map or digitally added to an online map such as Google Maps (https://www.google.com.au/maps/) or SIX Maps (nsw.gov.au). You could also measure survivorship rates and height of plantings, conduct soil and water quality testing and compare aerial maps.
More standardised methods for ecological monitoring required technical expertise, but incidental or scheduled informal observations can form valuable supplementary records. You know your local site(s) well because of the amount of time you spend there and as on-the-ground volunteers you are likely to be the people who notice changes occurring.