# Living EOV

ecoregion.net, and every layer around it, is living, learning, seeking and evolving. It is not dogma. It is a seeker, not a knower.

**Draft v0.** 23 October 2026. Still under review. This page is a window onto Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV), the Savory Institute's outcome-based monitoring protocol. It shows what public sources say, what is only a proposal, and what is still open. It does not grade land, rank places, or turn an observation into a verdict. Where a source is silent, the gap stays a gap. The page will change as the evidence does.

Disclosure: WeCology is connected to [GeoDataTrack](https://geodatatrack.com) (one of the tools that responded to the survey) and runs ecoregion.net and [EIA](/eia/). This page is tool-neutral and does not compare, rank or recommend any tool or platform.

## What EOV is

The March 2021 manual, version 3.0, calls EOV the science inside Land to Market: a check on whether land is regenerating, because using a practice does not guarantee regeneration (source 5). It names five outcomes — ground cover, water infiltration, biodiversity, primary productivity, and soil carbon and health — inside the four ecosystem processes: water cycle, mineral cycle, energy flow, and community dynamics. The public overview describes the same aim as biodiversity, water, soil health and ecosystem function, and Savory's ethos statement calls EOV "a learning mechanism and assessment tool for ongoing land improvement", alongside its role in market claims (sources 1, 2, 4). Regional Savory Hubs deliver it (sources 1, 4).

On this page a carbon figure is a record of what the biology has done, not the goal. A claim that one management caused a particular outcome stays a hypothesis (source 5).

Scope in the March 2021 manual is grasslands, grazed orchards, silvopasture and mixed livestock-cropping, with pure cropping only through pilots (source 5). The public manual says pure cropping systems are not currently considered (source 1). Both wordings stand. Extending setup to cropland and other habitats is open, below.

## Living learning, not a fixed rulebook

Verification and learning stay apart. Verification needs auditable rules, and that job stays with the protocol, the Hubs and quality assurance. Learning needs open questions, and that is what this page is for.

The manual already says "the concept of reference areas is dynamic, as proper management of land bases can generate new reference areas and change the boundaries of what can be achieved" (source 3). Every claim about how land works is held as provisional, including Holistic Management itself. Published trials disagree about grazing outcomes (source 13).

The four processes are questions put to a place: where rain goes, whether dead material returns to the soil, how long green leaf catches sunlight, and which plants and animals are arriving or leaving. People who have read land over generations, including Indigenous and local knowledge holders, are primary sources, with their consent and on their terms (source 15). Field notes are labelled observed. Rainfall from NASA POWER, soils from SoilGrids, and greenness from Sentinel-2 are labelled modelled context (sources 16, 17, 18). A satellite signal can raise a question. Only someone on the ground answers it. Every entry should say who or what contributed it, and when.

## Past — what the notes can support

### Holistic Management, as a book we can cite

The lineage batch of 12 September 2026 names Holistic Management, 3rd edition, Savory and Butterfield, Island Press, 2016, and lists ten parts as a spine: introduction, four key insights, holistic context, the ecosystem, tools, decision making, guidelines, procedures, feedback loop, conclusion (sources 12, 23). Cite the pattern only. This page does not paste the book. The same batch names three shorter books on financial planning and planned grazing (ebooks 7, 8 and 9, 2019). It maps them to the steward and to Skabenga, not to an automatic plan, and it does not tell an EOV origin story (source 23).

### Where the monitoring method came from

Two public accounts exist. Both are left standing.

- Chapter text first published in version 2.2 (January 2020) says Ovis 21, a Savory Hub, led the creation of the scientific methodology with scientists at Michigan State University (source 5).
- The current platform terms call EOV "a methodology developed by Savory" (source 6).

### What these notes still do not say

The operational digest of 16 September 2026 takes the EOV 3.0 Complete Manual, March 2021, as its source of truth. Where its sources conflict, the order is Complete Manual, then the EOV Field Guide 2025, then the scorecard field guides. Training notes and the [GeoDataTrack](https://geodatatrack.com) import manual are secondary, and the digest flags them when they diverge (source 24).

The state-and-transition idea in published science comes from rangelands that are not at equilibrium. Westoby, Walker and Noy-Meir proposed it in 1989. Later papers tied the models to ecological processes and resilience (sources 8, 9, 10, 11). Those papers are why a catalogue is used. They are not a scorecard.

A founding year before the January 2020 chapter text, a biography, and the join between the 2016 book and the manual are still open (sources 23, 24).

## How monitoring works today

From the public pages, the March 2021 manual, and the 16 September 2026 digest. This site does not publish the readings as a grade.

### Two time scales

Short-term monitoring of leading indicators is annual, in the growing season, from peak growth toward the end of the season (sources 1, 2, 5). Long-term monitoring of lagging indicators — biodiversity, infiltration, soil carbon — is a baseline and then about every five years, with optional photo checks in other years (sources 1, 2, 5, 24). The digest says the interval is not settled in every clause: five years in one wording, four to five years in another. That disagreement is question C5 below. This page does not pick a number.

### Fifteen leading indicators

The digest says Complete Manual chapter 4, table 1, numbers 15 leading indicators, and that no source in its set states a 16th. A live matrix may use fewer where an indicator does not apply (source 24):

1. Live canopy abundance
2. Living organisms (microfauna)
3. Warm season grasses
4. Cool season grasses
5. Forbs and legumes
6. Trees and shrubs
7. Contextually desirable rare species
8. Contextually undesirable species
9. Litter abundance
10. Litter decomposition (also called litter incorporation or litter–soil contact)
11. Dung decomposition
12. Bare soil
13. Capping
14. Wind erosion
15. Water erosion

They group under the four processes. Bare soil is spoken of as touching all four. The digest gives no further formula for a landscape-function index, and this page does not add one (source 24).

### Read inside its ecoregion

The manual says EOV "is not a one-size-fits-all metric" (source 5). The same bare ground, or the same mix of functional groups, is not the same story in every state or every degree of brittleness. Absolute indicators, such as erosion, capping and decomposition, keep their meaning across ecoregions. Relative indicators are calibrated to the reference area. Calibration rewrites descriptors, including the bare-soil wording, and leaves the numeric scale inside an indicator alone (sources 5, 24). This site describes that matrix. It does not use it to grade land.

## How an ecoregion is set up

Under version 3.0 a Hub or Master Verifier sets the ecoregion up before any land in it is monitored. The order is the four steps below (sources 3, 5, 24). Practitioners who know the land do the calibration.

1. Describe the ecoregion from a widely accepted map. On this site that map is RESOLVE Ecoregions 2017 (source 7). The description covers climate, geology, landforms, soils, vegetation, and brittleness, which the public manual says "dictates the region's response to management tools" (source 3). Brittleness is how steadily moisture and biological decay are available, and it changes how land responds to rest, grazing, fire and other tools. This page describes that quality in words.
2. Build a state-and-transition catalogue. States are stable expressions of physiognomy, soil and function. Transitions are the shifts between them, seen or still theoretical. The manual already draws theoretical transitions differently from observed ones (source 3). The catalogue also names the functional groups and the contextually desirable or undesirable species that matter there (sources 3, 5).
3. Identify reference areas: the best-known local expression of biodiversity, stability and function, found with local knowledge, imagery, scientific advice and experience. They matter especially in brittle ecoregions, and the concept is dynamic (source 3). They calibrate relative indicators. An ecoregion with many states may need more than one (source 5). On this public site they are described in general terms only, never named or located.
4. Calibrate the evaluation matrix, as above. The catalogue informs the matrix. It does not replace a walk on the ground.

Doctrine of 12 September 2026: practitioners own the catalogue. An [EIA](/eia/) draft stays a question until a person with standing reviews it, and it must never pin the state of a real place (source 25). Whether this deploy serves `/api/ecoregion-stm` is checked below. If it is absent, the page says so and does not invent a catalogue.

### What a record on this site can hold

This shape is a proposal. It is not adopted by the Savory Institute, any Hub, or an EOV 4.0 working group. A record could hold the RESOLVE name and id (source 7); a qualitative brittleness reading with its evidence; states and transitions, marked seen or theoretical; functional groups and key species, with local names where offered; reference areas in general terms only; the four process questions in local languages where offered; open questions; a log of role and date, with a personal name only if that person chooses it; and disagreements shown side by side. Nothing is deleted silently. A withdrawn entry leaves a dated note.

### How that knowledge deepens

Each ecoregion carries an [EIA](/eia/) knowledge status of Empty or Building, on the atlas and on the [Data](/data/) page. Empty means nothing has been gathered yet. Building means EIA is learning from data or from drafts for that ecoregion. The status is a state of the record, not a score, a grade, or a rank of the land (source 28).

On 23 October 2026, 160 of the 846 ecoregions showed Building and the others showed Empty. That snapshot will move. How far a reading has deepened is described in words. The public label stays Empty or Building. Every ecoregion can be added to. See [Collaboration](/collaborate/).

A page can start Empty, on generic text labelled as generic. EIA may draft a first reading from published literature, dated and marked not yet reviewed, and the status can become Building. A Hub or experienced local practitioner reviews, amends or rejects it. Further independent voices, including local and Indigenous knowledge given with consent, confirm it or dispute it. Repeat monitoring, shared only in aggregate and with consent, tests the catalogue, and reference areas and states are revised when the land shows something new, which the manual already allows (source 3). Each step keeps a date and a role. Building can mean a thin draft or a long argument. The badge does not measure which.

## How EIA reads EOV observations

> EIA draft – generated 23 Oct 2026, not yet reviewed

This section is offered by [EIA](/eia/), the Ecologically Intelligent Agent, as a dated draft open to correction (source 27). The examples are illustrative. They are not from a real property.

EIA is a seeker, not a judge. It reads what monitors have recorded — bare ground, litter, plant spacing, dung, species, photos, rainfall — and asks what the land might be telling us. It never grades a site and never produces its own score. The accredited verifier decides. The land is the court.

The four ecosystem processes are four windows into one living whole. The same ground usually shows in all four.

- Water cycle. Where does rain go once it lands? Capping, bare ground and litter hint at whether water soaks in or runs off.
- Mineral cycle. Are dung, litter and old plant material returning to the soil, or standing grey and oxidising?
- Energy flow. Is there green leaf for long enough to catch sunlight, and where does that energy go next?
- Community dynamics. Who is here, who is arriving, and who is leaving? Plant spacing, seedlings, functional groups, and the shift between monitorings.

EIA returns questions and testable hypotheses, not a conclusion. For example: bare ground is higher on this transect than on the last one — was timing, recovery or rainfall different? Seedlings appear in one illustration and not the neighbouring one — what differs in animal impact or soil cover? If recovery is longer next season, does litter rise at the next monitoring? Every hypothesis says what would show it to be wrong. The next monitoring is how the land answers.

Understanding grows with more seasons, more people, and with loops that run from observation to question to the land's answer. Stewards, monitors, verifiers, botanists and local knowledge holders can confirm, correct or deepen a suggestion, including through Skabenga, the field companion. The public label stays Empty or Building, beside the open questions. Every contribution records who or what it came from, and when.

## GlobalQA: quality assurance as a learning loop

GlobalQA reads EOV monitoring data and checks it against the published protocol. Version 3.0 is mapped to cited rules, and each check points back to its clause: whether required indicators are present, whether dates and strata hang together, and whether values match their source (source 26).

It does not give a pass or a fail, a score, or a colour. It raises gaps (something the protocol asks for that is missing), questions (something that needs a person), forward notes (what to plan next time), and observations (context that calls for no action). An accredited verifier makes the certification decision. GlobalQA does not.

The data stays with the hub. Nothing is written back. Each check run is sealed so the reasoning can be revisited. Repeated questions show where the protocol is unclear or where monitors need support. With a hub's consent, those patterns are intended to feed back into ecoregion.net and [EIA](/eia/) as open questions about the protocol, not as judgements of any land or person. That feedback is intended design. It is not built. The rules are versioned, so the protocol can change as the evidence does (source 26).

The pilot uses example data. This page does not publish counts of hubs, farms or monitoring events. Places where the manual's clauses disagree are questions C1 to C6 below. Interim settings in the rules file are proposals, not adopted here.

## What may change in EOV 4.0

The lineage batch and the digest do not specify EOV 4.0. Each item below is a proposal under discussion in the Savory Network. None has been agreed by the Savory Institute, any Hub, or a working group. Survey figures are interim aggregates, not a decision.

### Proposals under discussion, not agreed

- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** Quality assurance by independent reviewers, under published versioned standards, with changes recorded openly and with reasons. Network-run assurance and checks at data entry were each named by 3 of the 6 people who answered that survey question (sources 19, 20).
- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** A Network-owned open format for monitoring records, readable and writable by any field tool. Three respondents would adopt it, six might, and none would not. Five offered to help draft it (sources 19, 21). The FAIR principles are one public starting point (source 14).
- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** The land manager owns the observed data. Consent would be explicit, informed, revocable, and given for each use. Hubs would look after data rather than own it. Transfer, sale, or use in training a model would need specific consent (source 20).
- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** Hubs or regions would hold records in trust, organised by ecoregion. One shared Network record, or many regional ones, is still open (sources 20, 21).
- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** The protocol would stand apart from any one platform, programme or brand: "platforms serve the protocol, not the other way round" (source 20).
- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** Provenance on every record: who collected it, when, where, under which protocol version, and under what consent (sources 19, 20).
- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** Open export, so data can leave with its owner (sources 19, 20).
- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** Field capture that works offline first, including on a basic phone (source 19).
- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** Many languages from the start, so feedback can be read in the farmer's own language (source 19).
- **Proposal under discussion, not agreed.** A ground-truth repository held as a commons, and a training guild that calibrates observers rather than certifying land (sources 21, 22).

### How the public terms handle data today

This is a plain reading of the EOV Platform Terms of Use, accessed 22 and 23 October 2026, not legal advice and not a proposal (source 6). The farmer or rancher is the named owner. Uploading gives Savory, associated entities and Hubs an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence, including commercial use and sublicensing, and aggregations Savory makes become Savory's property. Closing an account leaves that licence in place for data already aggregated. The platform is described as not a backup site. Savory may change the terms, and says it will use best efforts to consult Hubs first. Uploaders promise that data follows the methodology and is accurate. Savory may screen it and is not obliged to. Colorado law is the named governing law. The consent proposal above would change this picture. It has not been agreed.

### The technology survey, in aggregate

The [EOV 4.0 Technology and Platform Survey](https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbz99egO0jC9r2aXqFU4uXeJsbEkOH6OnK5X6tFp-ohFLDcqJ4oDbqozxjs0NRXtW4aoCg/exec) is open until 30 November 2026. Figures are interim aggregates as of 20 October 2026 (source 19). Nine responses came from eight Network-linked organisations: four in Europe, three in Oceania, one in Africa, one in North America, none in South America. One organisation sent two entries. The sample is small and self-selected, and the figures may change. WeCology is connected to one responding tool. See the disclosure above. No respondent, organisation or tool is named.

- All nine support short-term monitoring. Six work fully offline. Six support a quality-assurance workflow. Seven offer self-service export. Two can be set to another language, and five are English-only. Those two language figures are from the same interim results and leave some responses undescribed. Several people asked for language-independent design and for offline field use.
- Location is recorded by all nine, time and recorder by eight, edit history by six, and a tamper-evident record by five.
- The land manager controls data by default in one of the nine. No respondent described an explicit consent step for the land manager. In most tools, control sits with a Hub, a contract, or a mix.
- On an open standard: three would adopt, six might, none would not, and five offered to help draft it.
- Six people answered on five-year needs. Five of them named a lower cost per land base. Three named Network-run quality assurance, three named checks at entry, three named tools that connect, and three named offline use on a basic phone.
- Seven would demonstrate a tool, five would join a shared test on land, and five would join a workshop.

One respondent, in paraphrase, asked why EOV is being done and for whom. A plain answer this page can offer, still open, is: to understand land well enough to manage it better, with verification as one use of that understanding.

### Open questions

Shells further down already hold C1 to C6, the repeat-visit flag, the plot wording, the lineage gaps, and what a next version should ask. Added beside them, and still undecided: habitat beyond grassland; a fixed chapter or a living knowledge base; who keeps an open standard, and under what licence; consent, including older data and re-identification; credit and protection for Indigenous and local knowledge (source 15); who would run Network quality assurance; what affects whether stewards take part, including reach for small Hubs; and, for each ecoregion, brittleness, which transitions have been seen, which species tell most, and where knowledgeable people disagree.

### Add a correction

Corrections are welcome from people who monitor land, run a Hub, build tools or study ecoregions: descriptions, catalogues, reference areas in general terms, and records that carry provenance, shared with the land manager's consent. The survey is a separate form. A note on this page is not sent to it.

Each question below has a suggestion shell. An example is labelled not yet reviewed, or it is a tombstone: Hidden by whom, when, and why, with the original text removed. Submitting the shell does not store a suggestion. No email is sent. Sign-in is not connected. The same rule applies on the [Collaboration](/collaborate/) page.

## Sources

1. Savory Institute. [Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV), public manual](https://savory-institute.gitbook.io/eov-manual-public) (GitBook). Undated online; accessed 23 October 2026.
2. Savory Institute. [Ecological Outcome Verification](https://savory.global/eov/), programme page. Undated; accessed 23 October 2026.
3. Savory Institute. [Regional calibration](https://savory-institute.gitbook.io/eov-manual-public/ecological-outcome-verification-eov/regional-calibration), EOV public manual. Undated online; accessed 23 October 2026.
4. Land to Market. [EOV — Ecological Outcome Verification](https://www.landtomarket.com/eov). Undated; accessed 23 October 2026.
5. Savory Institute. Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) Version 3.0 manual, March 2021, including chapter text first published in version 2.2 (January 2020). Read 23 October 2026. The public web manual is source 1.
6. Savory Institute. [EOV Platform Terms of Use](https://savory.global/eov-platform-terms/). Undated page; accessed 22 and 23 October 2026. The reading on this page is not legal advice.
7. Dinerstein, E. et al. (2017). An Ecoregion-Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm. BioScience 67(6):534–545 (online 5 April 2017). [https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix014](https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix014). Map viewer: [ecoregions.appspot.com](https://ecoregions.appspot.com/).
8. Westoby, M., Walker, B., and Noy-Meir, I. (1989). Opportunistic Management for Rangelands Not at Equilibrium. Journal of Range Management 42(4):266–274. [https://doi.org/10.2307/3899492](https://doi.org/10.2307/3899492).
9. Stringham, T. K., Krueger, W. C., and Shaver, P. L. (2003). State and Transition Modeling: An Ecological Process Approach. Journal of Range Management 56(2):106–113. [https://doi.org/10.2307/4003893](https://doi.org/10.2307/4003893).
10. Briske, D. D., Bestelmeyer, B. T., Stringham, T. K., and Shaver, P. L. (2008). Recommendations for Development of Resilience-Based State-and-Transition Models. Rangeland Ecology & Management 61(4):359–367. [https://doi.org/10.2111/07-051.1](https://doi.org/10.2111/07-051.1).
11. Bestelmeyer, B. T. et al. (2017). State and Transition Models: Theory, Applications, and Challenges. In Briske, D. D. (ed.), Rangeland Systems, Springer. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46709-2_9](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46709-2_9).
12. Savory, A., and Butterfield, J. (2016). Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment, 3rd edition. Island Press. ISBN 978-1-61091-743-8. Cite the pattern only. This page does not paste the book (source 23).
13. Briske, D. D. et al. (2008). Rotational Grazing on Rangelands: Reconciliation of Perception and Experimental Evidence. Rangeland Ecology & Management 61(1):3–17. [https://doi.org/10.2111/06-159R.1](https://doi.org/10.2111/06-159R.1). Cited so the page shows that grazing outcomes are contested.
14. Wilkinson, M. D. et al. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data 3:160018 (15 March 2016). [https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18](https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18).
15. Global Indigenous Data Alliance. [CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance](https://www.gida-global.org/careprinciples). Accessed 23 October 2026.
16. NASA. [Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER)](https://power.larc.nasa.gov/). Accessed 23 October 2026.
17. Poggio, L. et al. (2021). SoilGrids 2.0: producing soil information for the globe with quantified spatial uncertainty. SOIL 7:217–240 (14 June 2021). [https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-217-2021](https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-217-2021). Data: [soilgrids.org](https://soilgrids.org/).
18. European Space Agency / Copernicus. [Sentinel-2 mission](https://sentiwiki.copernicus.eu/web/s2-mission). Accessed 23 October 2026.
19. EOV 4.0 Technology and Platform Survey, [public results](https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbz99egO0jC9r2aXqFU4uXeJsbEkOH6OnK5X6tFp-ohFLDcqJ4oDbqozxjs0NRXtW4aoCg/exec). Figures as of 20 October 2026; accessed 23 October 2026. The survey is open until 30 November 2026.
20. WeCology, EOV Data Ownership and Farmer Consent: a starting draft for PLA-01, 21 October 2026. Draft proposal, not agreed.
21. WeCology, The Savory Network as the Global Ground-Truth Repository, draft v3, Sept 2026 — draft proposal, not agreed.
22. WeCology, The Savory Network as the Ground-Truth Training Guild, v2, September 2026. Draft proposal, not agreed.
23. Savory lineage batch — ebooks 7–9 and Holistic Management, 3rd edition, 12 September 2026. Pattern-level citation only.
24. EOV 3.0 operational digest, 16 September 2026. Precedence inside that digest: Complete Manual (March 2021), then Field Guide 2025, then scorecard guides.
25. EIA doctrine — settled decisions, 12 September 2026. The catalogue is practitioner-owned. An EIA draft is a question until a human veto, and it must not pin the state of a place.
26. GlobalQA rules catalogue, version 0.1, dated 9 October 2026, fetched 23 October 2026 from the deploy preview of the GlobalQA pilot. Live link: [rules.json](https://deploy-preview-1--globalqabuild.netlify.app/api/rules.json). The contradictions C1 to C6 are that file's configuration, described there as design-doc Appendix A. Interim settings are proposals, quoted as proposals, not adopted here.
27. [EIA](/eia/). How EIA reads EOV observations. EIA draft – generated 23 Oct 2026, not yet reviewed.
28. ecoregion.net EIA knowledge status, Empty or Building, as defined for the atlas on 23 October 2026: Empty means nothing gathered yet; Building means EIA is learning from data or drafts for that ecoregion. The 160 of 846 figure is the snapshot supplied for this draft. It is not a grade of the land. The live label is on the atlas and the [Data](/data/) page.

Editable copy: this file, `eov/questions.json`, and `eov/globalqa-contradictions.json`.

[Pilot: English Lowlands beech forests, a living record](/eov/pilot-663/).