Why We Need to Invest in Large-Scale, Long-Term Monitoring Programs in Landscape Ecology and Conservation Biology

Abstract

Large-scale and/or long-term monitoring has many important roles in landscape ecology and conservation biology. We explore some of these roles in this review. We also briefly discuss some of the key design issues that need to be considered when developing long-term, large-scale monitoring to ensure it is effective. Much has been written on the importance of ecological monitoring, but the record on monitoring in landscape ecology and conservation remains generally poor. For populations of many species and for many environmental management interventions, monitoring is rarely done, or done well. This review outlines some of the reasons it is critical to invest in well-designed, implemented, and maintained monitoring. New ways of using monitoring data, such as in environmental accounting and mandated environmental reporting, might provide avenues for garnering greater support for monitoring programs in the future. We discuss seven of the most important roles of monitoring in landscape ecology and conservation biology. These are (1) documenting responses to environmental change, (2) answering key ecological questions, (3) testing existing ecological theory and developing new theory, (4) quantifying the effectiveness of management interventions, (5) informing environmental prediction systems, (6) engaging citizen scientists and the general public, and (7) contributing data and other insights to environmental initiatives. We illustrate these key roles with examples, drawn from existing large-scale, long-term work in a range of environments in Australia. We argue that some of these functions can only be realized if a monitoring program is well designed, implemented, and maintained.