Monday, May 26, 2008 - 4:45 PM
98

Is a lack of power bugging you? appropriate replication for macroinvertebrate and fish monitoring programs

Andrew K. Sharpe, Sinclair Knight Merz, 590 Orrong Road, Armadale, 3143, Australia

Macroinvertebrate and fish community data are commonly used to assess river health, environmental impacts and responses to specific management actions across a range of spatial scales.  However, few monitoring programs specifically consider the level of replication that is required to characterise conditions at different spatial scales.  Poorly designed monitoring programs often conclude that more monitoring is required and only serve to frustrate river managers and waste valuable monitoring budgets.  In this talk I describe two studies where we analysed historical data and the results of a pilot study to assess variation in fish and macroinvertebrate communities.  On the basis of these analyses we determined the number of replicate monitoring sites that were needed to assess fish and macroinvertebrate communities at a scale that was relevant to river managers.  The results of this work highlight the trade-offs that may be needed between Type I and Type II errors.  These results also emphasise that it may be better to reduce the scope of a monitoring program rather than compromise the level of replication. 


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