Reference site

In this "Salmon Monitoring Advisor" web site, we use the term "reference site" to be synonymous with "control". That is, a reference site is a spatial/temporal location that is similar (ideally identical) to another site that only differs from the reference site by being affected to a greater (or lesser) extent by some mechanism that affects salmon. Of course, no two sites can be identical, but the careful choice of one or more reference sites will permit reasonably rigorous conclusions about differences in responses at those sites to the causal mechanism. More information on reference and control sites and the different uses of these terms can be found in Downes et al. (2002, page 122) and Roni et al. (2005, page 22).