More about benefits to you from using this web site

Those who fund monitoring programs or make decisions from them

If you help determine funding levels for monitoring programs or use information produced by them to make decisions, then this web site will help you to:

• Articulate management goals and objectives
• Make cost-effective decisions about use of limited funds for monitoring
• Learn the implications of reduced budgets for monitoring in terms of the resulting reliability of indicators of conservation concern (e.g., not wanting to be blind-sided by new problems).
• Justify a common, integrated process for designing monitoring programs across jurisdictions (but not by applying the same monitoring design). This integrated, coordinated process will permit answering broader-scale questions and possibly identify emerging, large-scale problems more quickly.
• Be more proactive rather than reactive with respect to unexpected future events or new information about your salmon populations.
• Better understand the causes of changes in salmon populations (such as climatic vs. anthropogenic effects) and be able to take appropriate action.

Also, before moving on, we suggest that you look at all of the other benefits listed on this page for other users of this web site.

Local stream-keepers, watershed councils, and other action-oriented non-governmental organizations

If you are facing a particular local salmon conservation issue, this web site will help you to:

• Articulate management goals and objectives
• Choose appropriate metrics or indicators to measure or estimate to meet those objectives
  
• Identify how you can produce the most useful monitoring data possible, given your limited human and financial resources
• Answer questions about the adequacy of your current monitoring programs for meeting conservation objectives
  
• Choose appropriate monitoring designs to resolve issues such as effects on salmon of human-induced changes in water quality/quantity.
• Add credibility to your proposals to funding sources for support of your plans 
  

Also, before moving on, we suggest that you look at all of the other benefits listed on this page for other users of this web site.

Scientists who are involved in monitoring programs

If you are a scientist involved in designing monitoring programs or in analyzing data from them to evaluate the status of salmon populations, you will benefit in several ways from using this web site.

• Certain types of spatial and temporal designs of monitoring programs are better than others for meeting particular goals and objectives. This web site describes these options and provides advantages and disadvantages of each to allow you to decide what is best for your situation.
  
• This site gives many examples from around the northeastern Pacific Rim to illustrate various features of monitoring programs.
  
• For understanding mechanisms causing changes in salmon, part of this web site illustrates the process for designing monitoring programs that can help reduce confounded interpretations of effects among several causal agents.
• You will better understand and communicate to budget managers the implications of reduced budgets for monitoring in terms of reliability of indicators of conservation concern (that is, trade-offs among size of budgets and quality of monitoring results such as precision, bias, and probability of correctly detecting some change of concern).
• The seven steps of monitoring on this web site will help guide you through key steps in preparing grant proposals, and will add credibility to the proposal. 
• This web site will help train younger staff about issues related to monitoring programs.
• You may find information on new ideas and methods here.
  
• For analyzing data either from past monitoring programs or newly added future monitoring sites, Step 5 describes some of the commonly used and more advanced statistical methods of analysis. These methods include ways to evaluate the performance of various designs via empirically based simulations before choosing which ones to implement in field sites. 
• You will find examples here of how to conduct such empirically based simulation analyses that will estimate the relative bias and precision of your resulting indicators.

Also, before moving on, we suggest that you look at all of the other benefits listed on this page for other users of this web site.

Technical staff who implement monitoring designs in the field

• Implications of unexpected logistical constraints that prevent implementing the original design as planned
  
• Importance of reducing observation error (created by inadvertent biases and sources of imprecision in estimates)
  
• Need to follow as closely as possible the original monitoring plan.
  

Also, before moving on, we suggest that you look at all of the other benefits listed on this page for other users of this web site.  

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