Seminar: Dr. Jana Davis, Chesapeake Bay Trust

Title: “POOLED MONITORING: THE CHESAPEAKE BAY TRUST’S CONCENTRATION OF MONITORING RESOURCES TO ANSWER KEY QUESTIONS”

Speaker: Dr. Jana Davis, Executive Director, Chesapeake Bay Trust

Abstract: Questions remain about impact of watershed restoration practices, and individual projects are often monitored as part of the restoration effort or to meet regulatory requirements.  However, measurements taken at individual projects, one at a time, limits interpretation of results beyond the level of the individual project.  When data are collected in this manner, often with differences in data collection methods, the ability to combine data from multiple projects to answer broader questions can be hampered. The Chesapeake Bay Trust, working with many partners in the resource management community, instead has proposed a structure in which efforts are concentrated to answer specific questions in a statistically robust way using an experimental design (replication and control sites to capture spatial and temporal variability) that enables extrapolation of results.  Monitoring is expensive: The pooled monitoring approach is a reorganization of monitoring resources to answer specific questions, such as how restoration practices perform under certain conditions.  We start with what we want to know, then ensure that the monitoring program is appropriate to rigorously answer those questions.  Collection of data that do not directly help answer key questions identified a priori is not encouraged.  The answers are then directed back into the regulatory and management communities.  During this seminar, the interaction between the regulatory, practitioner, and research communities will be discussed, and some of the key research needs of the two former communities will be discussed.