Ecological Knowledge System: National ecosystem states template for the Nature Repair Market - Grasslands (DRAFT). Version 1.0

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This collection contains information that describes the National ecosystem states template for grasslands used in the Ecological Knowledge System (EKS) for the Nature Repair Market (the market). The EKS is a partnership between CSIRO and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) to establish a transparent and authoritative source of information, biodiversity assessment and forecast capability for the market. The comprehensive summary report for the grasslands ecosystem states template is currently available as a draft and the final booklet will be published in October 2026.

The EKS team has collaborated with the Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network (TERN) funded NatureStates project (see Related links) to develop a set of generalised ecosystem states templates. The three templates – covering forests and woodlands, shrublands, and grasslands – capture the major structural variation across Australian terrestrial ecosystems (excluding freshwater herbaceous wetlands, salt lakes, in-channel aquatic ecosystems and tidally influenced coastal ecosystems). The templates are intended to function as a flexible and scalable foundation for developing regionally specific state-and-transition models (STMs) for the EKS. Prober et al. (2026) and Richards et al. (2026). (see Related links) describe how the templates can be used to create state-and-transition models. The templates also support consistency and comparability across Nature Repair Market methods while allowing adaptation to reflect regional ecological variation, method-specific objectives, and differing restoration pathways.

See the Related links for links to the data collections for the other two ecosystem states templates.

The ecosystem states templates build on established frameworks including the Australian Ecosystem Models (AusEcoModels) Framework, the Vegetation Assets, States and Transitions (VAST) framework, and the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) five-star recovery wheel. Each ecosystem state in the grasslands template is described using a two-layer approach that integrates the attributes of the defining ground layer and the complementary tree/shrub layers, resulting in a matrix of 16 core ecosystem states ranging from Close to reference to Collapsed/transformer. These core states are supplemented by intensive land-use states such as cropping, intensively managed exotic pastures, cultivated woody systems and artificial surfaces and infrastructure. Each state is explicitly associated with indicative ecosystem condition ranges based on compositional similarity to a high-integrity reference state providing a consistent basis for assigning ecosystem condition scores to ecosystem states.

This data collection is based on research created under the Project 'An Ecological Knowledge System for the Nature Repair Market scheme', which was funded by DCCEEW. The Commonwealth owns the intellectual property rights in any material developed while carrying out the Project. Copyright is retained by CSIRO (2026).

To cite the template booklet, please use the citation specified in the report.



Lineage: The template in this collection was developed through a collaboration with the Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network (TERN) funded NatureStates project (see Related links) to develop a set of generalised ecosystem states templates (Prober et al. 2026). The NatureStates project supported input to development of the templates from over 100 ecological scientists, restoration practitioners and policy makers. The templates have subsequently been tested and refined at four regional expert workshops.