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1
Monitoring challenges
landscape monitoring
Gary Fry Norwegian Institute for Nature and Cultural Heritage Research
the needthe need integrationintegration indicatorsindicators
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Keynote thoughts
• questions not answers
• larger scale issues of monitoring not research reports
• discuss which rural resources to monitor
• accept that priorities have been and always will be changing
• discuss what can be monitored and not (today)
• question the appropriate objectives for landscape monitoring
This presentation will provide:
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Management units
• Ownership or administrative boundaries are often not suited to landscape ecological planning
• can landscape character assessments be a suitable way forward
• if so what are the basic steps?national - regional - landscape
QuickTime™ and aGIF decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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Countryside character
eco log yh ab ita ts & sp ec ies
everyd ay lan d scap essp atia l p lan n in g
visu a l q u a lit ieslan d scap e aes th e tics
tran q u ilityam en ity
cu ltu ra l h eritag eloca l - n a tion a l id en tity
cu ltu ra l lan d scap escu ltu ra l en viron m en ts
in teg ra tin g cou n trys id e in te res ts
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Landscape: a hierarchical system
• regional levelregional level• of significance to areal planning (100km2)
• landscape levellandscape level• of interest to local plans, (10km2)
• site levelsite level• planning within individual ownerships (1km2)
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Changing priorities USA
2000199819961994199219900
20
40
60
80
100
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Nature conservation pressure (USA)
artic
les
per
quar
ter
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Some emerging issues
• what are trends in priorities for countryside issues?
• what can opinion polls and market surveys show?
0
10
20
30
40
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1970 1980 1990 2000
biodiversity
cultural heritage
recreation
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biodiversity monitoring problems
• communicating the deliverables from monitoring
• why it matters - doom & gloom since the 1960s
• education - schools do a bad job by providing negative associations instead of solution oriented
• biodiversity has never been well-understood by the public, losses have not affected people directly
• biodiversity has been taken care of...
• has not always integrated well with other interests, as it is not always possible to compromise (win-win is rare)
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Devolution of power
• local involvement
• stewardship
• participatory planning
• but increases damage to rural resources
• NIMBY
• looking at the evidence• wolves & sheep
• conifer forests
• snow scooters / wilderness
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why integrate rural interests?
• the countryside is currently a mess of interests often providing conflicting advice & grant aid
• both academic institutions and policy have supported or made worse this trend
• policy is now in favour of integrated approaches to landscape: approaches which demand new<<knowledge>> from research environments
• international agreements on biodiversity and landscape conservation increase this demand and for national reporting on landscape quality
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Loss of cultural heritageLoss of cultural heritageLoss of cultural heritageLoss of cultural heritage
%
100
0
25
50
75
0255075100
% cultural heritage sites remaining in a region
%
potential for historical interpretation
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what integration will NOT achieve
• it will NOT remove all conflict
• it will NOT prevent power struggles
• it will NOT tell us what we SHOULD do
• it will NOT make monitoring any easier• integrated monitoring methods
• coupling data from environmental & social sciences
• hierarchies of scale
• demand for quantitative indicators across interests
• qualitative vs quantitative approaches
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The role of indicators
• to simplify
• to communicate
• to quantify
• to summarise
• needed to compare landscapes or the same landscape over time
• needed for environmental reporting
• needed for detecting problems before they are acute
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size
shape
pattern
edge
matrix
linkagescontrast
Indices of patch characteristics
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Monitoring challenges
• deciding the classification - retain primary data
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Monitoring challenges
• the grassy bits - big errors + need to capture quality
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Monitoring challenges
• monitoring edges, corridors and boundaries
types
gaps
quality
functions
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Indicator frustrations
• monitoring has to accept operational limitations
BE HONEST
• what we DO know (the +/- aspects of the tools we use)
• what we DON’T know (no data or ability to interpret)
• what we COULD know (if given time and more resources)
• what we SHOULD know (to answer the questions asked)
• clear objectives for monitoring (verifiable objectives, e.g ability to detect 1% change in cover of deciduous woodland over 5 years)
• meta-studies of monitoring projects (what works)
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Monitoring success Standard recording schemes and methods. Training is important.
Scale of recording appropriate to the process/animal being monitored
Central monitoring co-ordinator / organisation to organise and oversee monitoring programme and to control quality and manage data.
• Monitoring records must be stored safely and be accessible to all stakeholders.
Change can only be verified if sites are geo-referenced and can be relocated.
Monitoring means repeated records, ensure monitoring work continues beyond the baseline survey phase.
Use monitoring results in policy & management, many past schemes have never been used, this reduces commitment and motivation.
Clear objectives for monitoring are necessary - what information will be provided and the detail necessary. Accept it will not be possible to monitor everything.
Indicators can be a useful tool. Linking to processes of interest essential.
• Monitoring cannot tell us what targets to aim for when setting standards, these are value judgements, what it can do is inform whether we are achieving these targets.