Scope - This is a project scale (33% of the property) assessment based on a targeted assessment of native vegetation condition within the environmental accounting area. As such, condition estimates are expected to be representative of the native vegetation within the project area only and not the entire property.

Stratification - Vegetation Classes were delineated directly from the mapping product and were not ground-truthed, validated or modified. Area mapped as cleared in the Vegetation Class dataset was confirmed to be forested through the other steps in the stratification process.

Reference Benchmarks - Reference Benchmarks have been taken at the level of Vegetation Class, and not the finer scale Plant Community Type (PCT). GreenCollar will continue to monitor the published PCT benchmarks for updates, and if finer scale benchmarks become available, they will be adopted in future reporting periods for this account.

Data Collection - During the baseline survey in 2013, non-native cover was not directly assessed in the field. To address this gap, non-native cover for all plots during the baseline survey was assumed to be the same as that assessed in the 2024 monitoring survey. This approach conservatively assumes that non-native vegetation conditions in 2013 were not better than in 2024. The surveys took place in different seasons, with the baseline survey in October 2013 and subsequent surveys in March, August, and September 2024. However, the seasonal difference is expected to have minimal impact on the Econd® scores, as the indicators target persistent woody vegetation rather than annual species.

The site context was defined using the best available spatial mapping of native vegetation extent for NSW. Since updated mapping to quantify change over time is not available, a conservative assumption was made that site context remained static from 2013 to 2024. The change in the site context ICS for AU2 reflects the replacement of plot 124 (surveyed in 2013) with plot 254 in 2024, as they are located approximately 4.5 km apart. Reanalysis of the environmental account, excluding the non-matched plots, showed that including them produced a more conservative change in the Econd® score compared to the scores without the non-matched plots.