Developing a monitoring project

Excerpt

Monitoring means “to watch or check on” (9). In resource management, monitoring is an essential step from both a resource and a legal perspective (5, G, 7, 10). In particular, monitoring is essential to evaluate management effects on a given resource; justify the expenditure of funds for pollution control, alternative resource management practices, and restoring degraded resources; optimize the allocation of funds among management alternatives; increase our understanding of the systems being monitored, particularly their temporal and spatial variability; and document compliance with regulatory requirements.

If our primary concern is water quality, for example, monitoring is used to evaluate compliance with water quality standards and the effects of management activities on water quality (3, 4, 5). If water quality is not satisfactory, a strategy must be developed to reduce incoming pollutants, and monitoring—often coupled with modeling-is essential to determine the most cost—effective approach. Thus, monitoring is essential to responsible, effective, and efficient resource management, and monitoring is increasingly a required component of water pollution control programs (e.g., 5, 6).

Nevertheless, remarkably little attention has …