Monitoring for the adaptive management of rivers

Area of Science:

• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Water resource management

Background:

• Current monitoring investments often prioritize surveillance, documenting trends without linking human pressures to environmental state.
• This approach fails to support adaptive management (AM), leading to decision-maker disappointment with unsuitable data.
• Monitoring program designers often perpetuate the status quo, hindering progress in AM.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a structured, collaborative approach for setting monitoring objectives to support adaptive management (AM) of New Zealand's rivers.
• To identify and address challenges and trade-offs in monitoring objectives for effective AM.
• To propose practical implementation strategies for a monitoring program geared towards AM, contrasting with surveillance monitoring.

Main Methods:

• Collaborative workshops with regional management authorities to define monitoring objectives for AM.
• Identification of 17 monitoring objectives based on national policy and regional AM requirements.
• Development of practical implementation strategies to overcome technical challenges and reduce trade-offs among objectives.

Main Results:

• Seventeen monitoring objectives were identified, directly linked to AM requirements.
• Some objectives, particularly from national policy, push the boundaries of current environmental science capabilities.
• Significant trade-offs among objectives were identified, necessitating strategic implementation approaches.

Conclusions:

• A structured, collaborative objective-setting process is crucial to shift from surveillance monitoring to effective AM.
• Practical strategies can mitigate technical challenges and reduce trade-offs, enabling more complex AM monitoring.
• Successful implementation of AM monitoring requires strong leadership due to its complexity compared to surveillance.