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COMPOSITE SAMPLING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING
Citation:
Garner, F. C., M. A. Stapanian, AND L. Williams. COMPOSITE SAMPLING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, (1996).
Description:
Guidance for selecting a plan to tomposite environmental or biological samples is provided in the form of models, equations, tables, and criteria. Composite sampling procedures can increase sensitivity, reduce sampling variance, and dramatically reduce analytical costs, depending on the exact nature of the samples, the analytical method, and the objectives of the study. The process of taking random grab samples and individually analyzing each sample for elements, compounds, and organisms of concern is very common in environmental, biological, and other monitoring programs. However, the process of combining aliquots from separate samples, and analyzing this pooled sample is sometimes beneficial. The researcher must consider detection limits, probability of analyte occurrence, criterion level, sample size, aliquot size, analyte stability, the number of samples, analysis cost, sampling cost, monetary resources, biological interactions, chemical interactions, and other factors in order to make a wise decision of whether to composite or not, and how many sample aliquots to composite.