Stevens et al. 2007

Stevens, D. L., Jr., D. P. Larsen, and A. R. Olsen. 2007. The role of sample surveys: Why should practitioners consider using a statistical sampling design. Pages 11-23 in D. H. Johnson, and coeditors, editors. Salmonid Field Protocol Handbook: Techniques for Assessing Status and Trends in Salmon and Trout Populations. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, Maryland.

The principle focus of this book chapter is to address a question facing many monitoring organizations: Is it possible to find a cost-effective way to integrate multiple monitoring efforts in a region? The American Fisheries Society, along with the State of the Salmon (a joint program of the Wild Salmon Center and Ecotrust), initiated The Salmonid Field Protocol Handbook as a way to compile a “…comprehensive set of scientifically rigorous monitoring protocols for salmon and trout”. Two main sections make up the book. The primary section consists of descriptions of techniques for sampling fish in streams, rivers, and estuaries to determine their abundances. An introductory section consists of a series of essays that address important, related topics. WED and Oregon State University scientists were requested to contribute an essay on the principles of statistical survey designs applicable to salmon and trout status and trends monitoring. The essay consists of an introductory section that places the remaining content in the context of the primary purpose of the book, descriptions of field techniques. The essay distinguishes the need for statistically rigorous survey designs that select locations to collect the fish, from response designs that describe the protocols used to collect fish at the locations specified by the designs. Included are brief reviews of simple and stratified random sampling, systematic sampling, and multi-stage and adaptive sampling that describe advantages and disadvantages with respect to stream and estuary sampling. The authors advocate the use of a spatially balanced survey design that they developed as part of USEPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program. This design overcomes the shortcomings of the existing approaches and has been used to develop numerous designs over the past decade covering such ecosystem types as estuaries, lakes, stream, rivers, wetlands, and forests. The approach provides a way to integrate numerous, currently disparate, monitoring programs into a cohesive network by which various monitoring agencies can share data to build a monitoring system that is bigger than its parts.