Determination of How to Assess the Quality of Effectiveness Monitoring Programs
Hundreds of millions of dollars are allocated each year to aid recovery of salmonid species listed under the Endangered Species Act, and enhancement of other non-listed anadromous and resident fish. There is a tremendous need to document the contribution that these efforts are making to improvements in watershed condition and listed species.
Basic questions about how fish respond to well-intended actions cannot be answered unless a significant amount of existing and new information is obtained and rolled up in a manner that, to date has typically not been done. PNAMP’s Effectiveness Monitoring group has started on a task to inventory and evaluate effectiveness monitoring studies in the region. The intent of this task is to gather information on completed and currently active effectiveness monitoring studies as well as those under development. The collection and subsequent evaluation of this information will allow for the development of a coordinated effectiveness monitoring network at a regional scale, facilitate potential integration of effectiveness monitoring with status & trend monitoring, and allow creation of tools to facilitate the evaluation of research and monitoring design and methods.
A second part of this project is intended to determine how to assess the quality of the studies listed in the inventory. This assessment of quality will allow researchers and managers to determine which studies are successfully achieving their objectives and can be applied to other regional studies or in specific geographical regions. The group has started this task by drafting a guidance document for assessing the quality (validity) of effectiveness monitoring studies at the project-scale. Although this guidance document addresses the quality of effectiveness monitoring studies at the project or reach scale, the methods could be applied to studies conducted at larger spatial scales. The results of this assessment will be used to develop a standard by which future project and watershed scale effectiveness monitoring studies can be evaluated, and to determine areas of needed expansion and coordination for future effectiveness monitoring investments.