We will provide a series of brief introductions (4-8 minutes each) to a suite of practical tools that are being applied by land managers and policymakers throughout the world. The remainder of the side event will be devoted to hands-on demonstrations. The presentations will include both a description of the tools, and how they are being applied to guide land management at the local scale and (for some) to support national reporting to the UNCCD by the United States. The tools to be highlighted include (among others) (1) an entire dryland monitoring system that requires only a 1m stick, a single sheet of paper, and no ability to read or write (jornada.nmsu.edu + Riginos poster), (2) additional simple field tools including a 10 minute test for soil resistance to erosion (jornada.nmsu.edu + Herrick et al 2010 - Frontiers), (3) a user-friendly database for streamlining and standardizing data collection, and automatically generating land health indicators (jornada.nmsu.edu + Courtright Poster), (4) an assessment system for 3 key attributes of land health that has already been applied at over 30,000 locations (Herrick et al 2010 - Frontiers), (5) simple tools for analyzing aerial photography that do not require a background in GIS or remote sensing (landscapetoolbox.org), and (6) a tools for estimating how may measurements are needed at multiple spatial scales (landscapetoolbox.org). All of the tools and guides can be freely downloaded at jornada.nmsu.edu (click on ‘Monitoring’) or landscapetoolbox.org, and some are available in several languages, including Chinese, Mongolian and Spanish.