1. Goals
1.1 Identifying monitoring goals and objectives: Introduction
Overview Introduction Status & Trend Basic Questions Mechanisms Basic Questions
A critical first step that you must take in developing your monitoring project is to clearly define the goals (i.e. purposes) of the project and the objectives (i.e. specific quantitative statements) needed to achieve the goals. Each goal is usually accompanied by numerous objectives.
- More Information
-
- Goals are statements that broadly define what you hope to achieve with the monitoring project. For example, a goal might be to provide monitoring guidance to support evaluation of the effect of climate change on salmon populations around the Pacific Rim, or to improve our understanding of the effects of climate change on salmon populations.
- Objectives are specific quantitative statements on how the goals will be achieved. Objective statements should include what (quantitative statements about the biological populations and indicators), where (the spatial domain of interest), and when (the temporal domain of interest), and might include information about desired precision.
It is likely that investigators will want to address multiple goals and objectives. However, monitoring designs cannot achieve all objectives at once. It is important to remember that "objectives compete for samples". Given that budgets are limited, "compromises" are necessary. Difficult decisions will be necessary about priorities for the plethora of objectives that a group might want to address.
The development of goals and objectives is an iterative process wherein potential constraints or needs that may arise at any stage of monitoring design, implementation, and reporting need to be evaluated for their potential impacts on achieving the desired goals and objectives. For example, if (as is often the case) funding is not available to sample an adequate number of sites to provide the precision and power originally identified in the objective statements, then either the objectives should be revised to reflect what is realistic given funding constraints, or more funds need to be made available.
In developing your goals and objectives there are three basic categories of questions you should consider:
- Management requirements (i.e. the needs of funding entities, managers, policy makers, etc.)
- Monitoring design characteristics (i.e. information needed to determine the specifics of where, when, and how you will sample, an how you will analyze the resulting data).
- Constraints (i.e. factors which may inhibit achieving specific management needs - for example inadequate resources to sample a enough sites to achieve precision or power goals)
Under each of these categories there are a number of basic questions. The answers to these basic questions will provide information that will help you to clearly state your goals and objectives and be useful to you in later steps in developing your monitoring program.
Before answering these basic questions, you will need to first decide whether you are primarily interested in gathering information to simply determine the status and/or trend in salmon indicators or to understand the causal mechanisms responsible for the observed status and/or trend.
- More Information
-
Making this distinction is crucial because, although many of the design steps are similar for these two purposes, designing a monitoring program to provide information about mechanisms involves additional considerations specific to experimental designs (i.e., using contrasting locations, times, etc.) or observational designs (i.e., comparing salmon and environmental variables at different times or places). Knowledge about mechanisms, whether climatic change, human activities, or other factors, could help identify appropriate actions to mitigate their effects. Once you have made the decision about whether you are mainly interested in monitoring to estimate the status and/or trend in salmon indicators or to better understand causal mechanisms, you are ready to proceed to the next steps of identifying goals and objectives by selecting the appropriate option for you.
Once you have decided the primary purpose of your monitoring program, click on the appropriate option below.
