A second common failing of monitoring efforts is equating monitoring with research. The goals of a research study are different from those of a monitoring project. Typically, monitoring addresses one of two questions: (1) Has the variable of interest changed by some defined magnitude (e.g., 20% decline over 5 years), or (2) Has that variable crossed some defined threshold (e.g., federal water quality standard)? Research usually tries to understand the causes of change—if such change occurs. These are more complicated questions, requiring greater sophistication in design, and thus larger expense. Too often, research, couched in terms of monitoring, repeatedly answers the same question because it is thought that monitoring needs to be focused on long-term data collection. Thus, its value decreases over time, as its relevance to current needs disappears.
For example, a common question when initiating a prescribed burning project is “What is the impact of prescribed fire on the rare plant species x?” This is a research question, and the parameters of interest might be survivorship, changes in reproduction, changes in vigor, and the like. To know that any differences detected pre- and post- burning are a result of the treatment, and not due to weather, a rigorous experiment needs to be implemented and data need to be collected in unburned (control) plots in addition to those plots in the burned area. The results of this experiment may, after five years of data collection, show that species x responds well to fire, with the survivorship and vigor of individuals being higher in the burned area than in the controls, and the reproduction rate is dramatically higher as well. The clear conclusion the fire management is beneficial to species x. The logical result would be to declare the research successful, and reallocation of efforts to different, or new, problems. Unfortunately, it is too often argued that even though we now know how the species responds to fire, data collection cannot be stopped because the original study was called a “monitoring” study and monitoring is a longterm effort. Similarly, these sorts of research studies are repeated, over and over, at many places because the original experimental design was couched as a monitoring study that becomes ossified as the accepted method. Thus, the experiment is repeated ad infinitum, and we rediscover that species x responds well to fire over and over again.
The appropriate response would be to acknowledge that research has shown that species x is fire dependent and the set management goals to ensure fires occur within some specified return interval. Monitoring would be based on some abundance objectives for species x; either some minimum number or some desired percent change over a specific period (e.g., a 20% increase in the number of flowering plants per hectare within 10 years).
Next Page: Dependence on “standard methods”
Author
Bob Unnasch, Ph.D.
Sound Science LLC
Monitoring biodiversity
Confusing monitoring with inventory
Confusing monitoring with research