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DESIGNS FOR ESTIMATING VARIABILITY STRUCTURE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR DETECTING WATERSHED RESTORATION EFFECTIVENESS
Citation:
LARSEN, D. P. AND N. S. URQUHART. DESIGNS FOR ESTIMATING VARIABILITY STRUCTURE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR DETECTING WATERSHED RESTORATION EFFECTIVENESS. Presented at American Fisheries Society Conference, Anchorage, AK, September 12 - 15, 2005.
Impact/Purpose:
To describe a design framework that allows evaluation of these competing needs along with an estimation of the structure of variation.
Description:
The evaluation of stream restoration projects is moving from a focus on project specific effectiveness to a more holistic evaluation of the array of restoration activities that are or might be imposed to improve conditions across the stream network. Part of evaluating how the condition of whole watersheds is responding to the complex of management actions is the development and implementation of an ongoing monitoring program that provides snapshots of overall network condition and whether that condition is changing over time. This implies monitoring a network of sites selected to represent the network as a whole. The implementation of sample surveys is one approach by which status and change over time can be tracked with confidence. Variability (spatial, temporal, and “residual”) affects both the estimation of yearly status and change across years, but in different ways. Surveys can be designed to estimate the important components of variation to provide an ongoing basis for adapting the monitoring network. Designs that are efficient for one purpose (i.e., status) are not necessarily efficient for another purpose (i.e., trend). In this presentation, we describe a design framework that allows evaluation of these competing needs along with an estimation of the structure of variation.