Monitoring of wetlands: Overview

Abstract

Wetland monitoring provides the key to understanding how wetlands function and how they respond to environmental change. Monitoring programmes can be designed for a range of purposes such as ensuring that wetlands are managed in accordance with best practice or quantifying how effective a habitat management strategy has been. Proper planning is required to support robust statistical data analysis and to see that monitoring activities complement existing work. Technological advances are improving the temporal and spatial scales over which monitoring can be carried out and schemes to involve volunteers in making observations are both generating useful data and raising awareness of the importance of wetland habitats.