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Monitoring challenges

landscape monitoring

Gary Fry Norwegian Institute for Nature and Cultural Heritage Research

the needthe need integrationintegration indicatorsindicators

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Keynote thoughts

• 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

This presentation will provide:

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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

eco log yh ab ita ts & sp ec ies

everyd ay lan d scap essp atia l p lan n in g

visu a l q u a lit ieslan d scap e aes th e tics

tran q u ilityam en ity

cu ltu ra l h eritag eloca l - n a tion a l id en tity

cu ltu ra l lan d scap escu ltu ra l en viron m en ts

in teg ra tin g cou n trys id e in te res ts

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Landscape: a hierarchical system

• regional levelregional level• of significance to areal planning (100km2)

• landscape levellandscape level• of interest to local plans, (10km2)

• site levelsite level• planning within individual ownerships (1km2)

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Changing priorities USA

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Nature conservation pressure (USA)

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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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1970 1980 1990 2000

biodiversity

cultural heritage

recreation

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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 new<<knowledge>> 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 heritageLoss of cultural heritageLoss of cultural heritageLoss of cultural heritage

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% cultural heritage sites remaining in a region

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potential for historical interpretation

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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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size

shape

pattern

edge

matrix

linkagescontrast

Indices of patch characteristics

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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 DON’T 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.