Annotated List of Selected Monitoring References

Conservation Case Studies

Connor EJ, DE Pflug. 2004. Changes in the distribution and density of pink, chum, and Chinook salmon spawning in the upper Skagit River in response to flow management measures. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 24: 835-852. This case illustrates the importance of using counterfactuals to evaluate the success of conservation interventions. Twenty years after the dams were altered to be more salmon-friendly the Chinook salmon population remained the same in the upper Skagit River while all other nearby populations deteriorated.

D'Agnes H, J Castro, L D'Agnes, R Montebon. 2005. Gender issues within the population-environment nexus in Philippine coastal areas. Coastal Management 33: 447-458. The Integrated Population and Coastal Management (IPOPCORM) program combined family-planning and food security efforts to improve conditions for marine biodiversity in the Philippines. A before-after-control-impact (BACI) design was used to test the effectiveness of these interventions in several communities.

Halpern BS, SD Gaines, RR Warner. 2004. Confounding effects of the export of production and the displacement of fishing effort from marine reserves. Ecological Applications 14: 1248-1256. The authors use data from marine protected areas to question the effectiveness of before-after-control-impact (BACI) monitoring design under certain conditions. Fish dispersal out of no-take zones and fishing pressure displacement to other areas meant that sampling along a gradient away from a protected area was more effective in this case.

Provencher L, BJ Herring, DR Gordon, et al. 2001. Effects of hardwood reduction techniques on longleaf pine sandhill vegetation in northwest Florida. Restoration Ecology 9: 13-27. This Nature Conservancy project tested the effectiveness and cost of different prescribed burn regimes for a restoration project. The design incorporates treatments, controls and comparison to a reference, or already restored ecosystem.

Monitoring Methods & Statistics

Bonham CD. 1989. Measurements for Terrestrial Vegetation. John Wiley & Sons. One of the best and clearest sources of information about the range of vegetation sampling methods, practical directions, and how to analyze the data you get from each.

Elzinga CL, DW Salzer, JW Willoughby, J Gibbs. 2001. Monitoring Plant and Animal Populations. Blackwell Science. This collection of field monitoring methods is intended for practioners and includes instructions for calculating basic sample size and confidence intervals by hand.

Fowler FJ. 2008. Survey Research Methods (Applied Social Research Methods). Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. This book is a robust, but easy to read introduction to basic social science methods. Not aimed specifically at conservation questions, but a good first stop for those interested in incorporating social assessments into conservation work.

Peterman RM. 1990. Statistical power analysis can improve fisheries research and management. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 47: 2-15. This paper provides statistical, graphical, and several examples that demonstrate why sampling error rates should be clearly articulated within any monitoring design. The examples use fishery data to demonstrate several cases where management decisions were based on data that had high probability (>75%) of missing real changes in the fish populations that management was intended to protect.

Pullin AS, GB Stewart. 2006. Guidelines for systematic review in conservation and environmental management. Conservation Biology 20: 1647-1656. Evidence-based conservation mimics the medical practice of consulting a wide range of case studies to support choosing an appropriate intervention. The authors provide a guide for methodically gleaning conservation results from published and unpublished sources.

Legendre P, L Legendre. 1998. Numerical Ecology. Elsevier, New York. This text discusses a number of innovative ways to explore patterns in ecological data.

Sokal RR, FJ Rohlf. 1994. Biometry: The Principles and Practices of Statistics in Biological Research. W.H. Freeman, New York. This is a classic general text guiding users through statistical problems frequently encountered in biological research.