The Landscape Monitoring Framework of the socio-economic dimension (LMS) is a tool that provides practical guidance to assess the socio-economic status of a landscape to monitor progress and facilitates action for development. The LMS targets the stakeholders of the landscape initiative, and in particular the initiators of the initiative, as the main user group. It was developed to meet the growing needs for landscape assessments to look deeper into socio-economic matters in a structural manner and give the socio-economic dimension the same attention as environmental and economic dimensions.

The LMS Guidance Document guides through an inclusive and stepwise approach to assessing and monitoring landscape interventions along three application areas: 1. Initial assessment of the landscape: The LMS provides resources and guidance to conduct a systematic analysis of the landscape. This includes gathering relevant data and information for learning, for further decision-making such as collaborative planning, as well as reporting for accountability. 2. Prioritisation of socio-economic topics to focus on: The LMS facilitates a process of identifying the most relevant socio-economic topics and helps identifying overall goals for the landscape initiative for these topics. This is done by providing both a list of relevant socio-economic topics and practical guidance on how to select the relevant ones based on specific criteria. 3. Customisation of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) system: The LMS provides support for the design of a customized MEL system, which can include a Theory of Change, the definition of relevant indicators and data sources as well as a baseline assessment.