Lakes, Ponds and Wetland Functions Checklist

This checklist supports rangeland monitoring of lakes, ponds, and wetlands. It guides observations across hydrology, vegetation diversity and structure, soils and erosion-deposition, shoreline stability, and nutrient and water quality. Prompts cover riparian soil moisture, water level changes and causes, filtering capacity of plant communities, signs of bank shearing and compaction, presence of algae, and indicators of good water quality and vegetated hummocks. It also captures site information, photos, and plant community details (cover and stubble height) and documents external and managed land-use factors such as dams, culverts, channelization, clearing, recreation, roads/logging, draining, fire, grazing, mowing, structures, and seeding. Use it to record conditions and inform stewardship actions over time.