Monitoring challenges

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Monitoring challenges
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vis - merknader 19.10.00 Ksi
landscape monitoring
the need
integration
indicators
Gary Fry Norwegian Institute for Nature and
Cultural Heritage Research
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Keynote thoughts
This presentation will provide

• questions not answers
• larger scale issues of monitoring not research
  reports
• discuss which rural resources to monitor
• accept that priorities have been and always will
  be changing
• discuss what can be monitored and not (today)
• question the appropriate objectives for landscape
  monitoring

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Management units

• Ownership or administrative boundaries are often
  not suited to landscape ecological planning
• can landscape character assessments be a suitable
  way forward
• if so what are the basic steps?national -
  regional - landscape

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Countryside character
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Landscape a hierarchical system

• regional level
• of significance to areal planning (100km2)
• landscape level
• of interest to local plans, (10km2)
• site level
• planning within individual ownerships (1km2)

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Changing priorities USA
Nature conservation pressure (USA)
articles per quarter
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Some emerging issues

• what are trends in priorities for countryside
  issues?
• what can opinion polls and market surveys show?

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biodiversity monitoring problems

• communicating the deliverables from monitoring
• why it matters - doom gloom since the 1960s
• education - schools do a bad job by providing
  negative associations instead of solution
  oriented
• biodiversity has never been well-understood by
  the public, losses have not affected people
  directly
• biodiversity has been taken care of...
• has not always integrated well with other
  interests, as it is not always possible to
  compromise (win-win is rare)

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Devolution of power

• local involvement
• stewardship
• participatory planning
• but increases damage to rural resources
• NIMBY
• looking at the evidence
• wolves sheep
• conifer forests
• snow scooters / wilderness

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why integrate rural interests?

• the countryside is currently a mess of interests
  often providing conflicting advice grant aid
• both academic institutions and policy have
  supported or made worse this trend
• policy is now in favour of integrated approaches
  to landscape approaches which demand
  newltltknowledgegtgt from research environments
• international agreements on biodiversity and
  landscape conservation increase this demand and
  for national reporting on landscape quality

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Loss of cultural heritage

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what integration will NOT achieve

• it will NOT remove all conflict
• it will NOT prevent power struggles
• it will NOT tell us what we SHOULD do
• it will NOT make monitoring any easier
• integrated monitoring methods
• coupling data from environmental social
  sciences
• hierarchies of scale
• demand for quantitative indicators across
  interests
• qualitative vs quantitative approaches

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The role of indicators

• to simplify
• to communicate
• to quantify
• to summarise
• needed to compare landscapes or the same
  landscape over time
• needed for environmental reporting
• needed for detecting problems before they are
  acute

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Indices of patch characteristics
pattern
matrix
shape
edge
contrast
linkages
size
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Monitoring challenges

• deciding the classification - retain primary data

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Monitoring challenges

• the grassy bits - big errors need to capture
  quality

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Monitoring challenges

• monitoring edges, corridors and boundaries

types gaps quality functions
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Indicator frustrations

• monitoring has to accept operational limitations
  BE HONEST
• what we DO know (the /- aspects of the tools we
  use)
• what we DONT know (no data or ability to
  interpret)
• what we COULD know (if given time and more
  resources)
• what we SHOULD know (to answer the questions
  asked)
• clear objectives for monitoring (verifiable
  objectives, e.g ability to detect 1 change in
  cover of deciduous woodland over 5 years)
• meta-studies of monitoring projects (what works)

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Monitoring success

• Standard recording schemes and methods. Training
  is important.
• Scale of recording appropriate to the
  process/animal being monitored
• Central monitoring co-ordinator / organisation to
  organise and oversee monitoring programme and to
  control quality and manage data.
• Monitoring records must be stored safely and be
  accessible to all stakeholders.
• Change can only be verified if sites are
  geo-referenced and can be relocated.
• Monitoring means repeated records, ensure
  monitoring work continues beyond the baseline
  survey phase.
• Use monitoring results in policy management,
  many past schemes have never been used, this
  reduces commitment and motivation.
• Clear objectives for monitoring are necessary -
  what information will be provided and the detail
  necessary. Accept it will not be possible to
  monitor everything.
• Indicators can be a useful tool. Linking to
  processes of interest essential.
• Monitoring cannot tell us what targets to aim for
  when setting standards, these are value
  judgements, what it can do is inform whether we
  are achieving these targets.