Designing Biotic Surveys for Monitoring Programs

Following remedy selection, a monitoring program must be developed to evaluate not only the effectiveness of the remedy in reducing ecological risk, but also the effectiveness of any mitigation measures identified to address potential implementation impacts of the selected remedy. Inherent to any ecological monitoring program is variation in the numbers of plants and animals counted. Some of that variation is natural (e.g., population dynamics such as births, deaths, immigration, and emigration, weather effects, and so on) and some is due to the limitations of the chosen monitoring technique (e.g., observer differences, different fractions of individuals being counted each time). This variation in numbers (from both natural and sampling sources) partially obscures the presence of any long-term trends. If the variation is sufficiently high, the monitoring program may fail to detect important underlying population trends and ecological responses that are the focus of the monitoring program.

The U.S. Geologic Survey hosts a web site that provides a number of tools to aid in the development of effective survey monitoring programs. The tools and information on this web site are intended for anyone who is interested in starting a monitoring program, and do not assume advanced knowledge of statistics. This web site may be accessed at: http://www.usgs.gov/

Last Modified: 02/17/2005

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