Monitoring Ecological Change

About this book

New edition of the leading textbook on monitoring ecological change.

The state of ecosystems, biological communities and species are continuously changing as a result of both natural processes and the activities of humans. In order to detect and understand these changes, effective ecological monitoring programmes are required. This book offers an introduction to the topic and provides both a rationale for monitoring and a practical guide to the techniques available. Written in a nontechnical style, the book covers the relevance and growth of ecological monitoring, the organizations and programmes involved, the science of ecological monitoring and an assessment of methods in practice, including many examples from monitoring programmes around the world. Building on the success of the first edition, this new edition has been fully revised and updated with two additional chapters covering the relevance of monitoring to the reporting of the state of the environment, and the growth of community based ecological monitoring.

Contents

Foreword; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Ecological monitoring; 2. Environmental monitoring programmes and organizations; 3. State of the environment reporting and ecological monitoring; 4. Biological scales and spatial scales in ecological monitoring; 5. Biological indicators and indices; 6. Diversity and similarity indices; 7. Planning and designing ecological monitoring; 8. Community-based ecological monitoring; 9. Ecological monitoring of species and biological communities; 10. Ecological monitoring and environmental impact assessments; Appendix 1. Acronyms used in the text; Appendix 2. The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity; References; Index.

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Biography

Ian Spellerberg is Professor of Nature Conservation at Lincoln University, New Zealand and Director of the University's Isaac Centre for Nature Conservation.