Monitoring, especially for wilderness conditions

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Monitoring, especially for wilderness conditions
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• usually the weak link
• increasingly mandated
• start with general principles
• the discuss wilderness monitoring

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• Dont collect information till you know how it
  will be used.
• Silbee Peterson. 1993
• define objectives
• select attributes ( indicators)
• develop monitoring methods
• conduct pilot studies/evaluation
• create institutional framework

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• Merigliano 1989, indicators should
• be quantitative (measurable
• correlate with man-caused change
• be feasible
• be reliable
• be responsive
• be sensitive

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• provide integration
• provide early warning
• have significance

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• Two levels of information needed
• indication of current conditions
• indication of trends

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• Triage - areas that
• are pristine or nearly so
• were not sure about
• obviously need help

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Managing for non-degradation Need trend
information? Set a floor?
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• Monitoring for trends. Four rules
• Measure same sites/conditions
• Train those who monitor
• Use procedures that provide confidence intervals
• Avoid judgments from people doing the measurements

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large small confidence
intervals
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approximate Sample size
fraction observ. range conf. interval
100 .37 .28 - .47 10
250 .37 .31 - .43 6 1,000
.37 .34 - .40 3
Precision increases approximately as square-root
of sample size. To double precision, quadruple
sample size.
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Monitoring Social Conditions For trends, how do
you find same conditions? Whats an
encounter? What do visitors perceive?
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• Monitoring Biological Integrity
• Problems tend to move downhill and affect streams
• Index of Biological Integrity (IBI)
• originally based on fish
• now many systems using invertebrates