Monitoring Biodiversity

Combining Environmental and Social Data

Anna Allard, E. Carina H. Keskitalo, Alan Brown, Anna Allard, E. Carina H. Keskitalo, Alan Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781032015934
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000840674
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is an exciting reappraisal of the role and practice of biodiversity monitoring, showing how new technologies and software applications are rapidly maturing and can both complement and maintain continuity with the best practice in traditional field skills.

Environmental monitoring is a key component in a large number of national programmes and constitutes an important aspect of understanding environmental change and supporting policy development. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Monitoring Biodiversity begins by discussing monitoring as an established field and examines the various budgetary and technological challenges. It examines different methodologies, the variation between countries, and the design features relevant to understanding monitoring systems created for new policy goals or different funding situations. The huge variety of methods revealed across 18 chapters, which vary from statistical designs to remote sensing, interviews, surveys, and new ways of stacking and combining data and thematic information for visualization and modelling, underlines just how mature and multifaceted the modern practice of monitoring can be. It concludes with several problem-based chapters that discuss the design and implementation of environmental monitoring in specific scenarios such as urban and aquatic areas. All chapters include key messages, study questions, and further reading.

With a focus on Europe but with international relevance, Monitoring Biodiversity will be an essential resource for students at all levels of environmental monitoring, assessment, and management.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Monitoring biodiversity: combining environmental and social data
• 2 Monitoring as a field
• 3 Demands on monitoring
• 4 Designing monitoring systems
• 5 Data collected in situ: unique details or integrated components of monitoring schemes
• 6 Citizen science: data collection by volunteers
• 7 Remote sensing and Earth observation systems
• 8 New and changing use of technologies in monitoring: drones, artificial intelligence, and environmental DNA
• 9 Managing hybrid methods for integration and combination of data
• 10 Social data: what exists in reporting schemes for different land systems?
• 11 Understanding the social context of monitoring
• 12 Register data as a resource for analysis
• 13 Survey questionnaires: data collection for understanding management conditions
• 14 Interviews with landowners and managers – what can they provide?
• 15 Designing and adapting biodiversity monitoring schemes
• 16 Monitoring small biotopes and habitats with a history of cultural management
• 17 Case study: reindeer husbandry plans – “Is this even monitoring?”
• 18 Reflections on monitoring: conclusions and ways forward
• Appendix 1 Horvitz-Thompson estimators
• Appendix 2 Summary table of survey sample designs
• Appendix 3 Definitions of terms: micro, aggregated, and register databases
• Appendix 4 Additional examples of potential microsimulation applications
• Index