just the sort of answer I was after. many thanks

This is the presentation my colleagues and I gave on this topic recently

Conference Paper Delivering science to regional water committees in NSW: ensu...

Hi Patrick, I’m afraid that success of a long term environmental monitoring program comes down to economics. The program must deliver benefits that can justify the costs of implementation. A consequence of this argument is that it is harder to establish new long-term programs than to perform short term pieces of research. The value of a long term program grows with time and the benefits seem much less in the intervening period; people prefer to reap the rewards of funding after a short period and do not like to commit funds with no end date.

Nationally, I’ve been involved with the Countryside Surveys in Britain that started in the 1970s (http://www.countrysidesurvey.org.uk/); when I started in the 1980s it wasn’t considered high quality research and we were pressured to always take on new techniques so that we could justify the scientific status – it is a fine line to walk between bringing new techniques on line and compromising data and information already collected.

The first survey (1978) was planned as a single piece of research (focussing on vegetation), the second survey (1984) was in response to interest in the first survey’s results and focussed on measuring land cover and land cover change. Since then, surveys have revisited and extended the number of sites (in 2007 there were 591 1 km squares visited, mapped and sampled) and collected a greater variety of data (vegetation, soils, water, habitats (mapped on the ground and using aerial photos), ponds and linked surveys of birds and farm economics); in 1990, 2000 and 2007 there were also satellite derived maps of land cover published (http://www.countrysidesurvey.org.uk/land-cover-map-2007). It is expensive to run the survey; it only survives because the British Government (or its departments and agencies) sees value in it and uses the information as evidence for policy development.

My colleagues also run the Environmental Change Network (ECN - http://www.ecn.ac.uk/) that builds on sites where measurements have been taken since 1843. They have developed protocols for monitoring that allow data from a dozen terrestrial sites and 45 freshwater sites to be presented and analysed together; it is only by presenting and using the long-term data they can justify the ongoing expense. The work is now part of broader European (ALTER-Net http://www.alter-net.info/) and global (linking with LTER http://www.lternet.edu/) networks of long term monitoring.

I am familiar with LTER. This is very pertinent advice. You are describing what is the nub of the challenge; the need to deliver before funding us removed. If the program cant deliver in time, priorities change, the culture never supported the program or too much was promised etc. then funding is removed.

Hi Patrick, I think there are other issues raised by short term perspectives. We are not good at forecasting future changes, and tend to focus on things we know are happening at the moment. However, to be able to make authoritative statements about change you need observations to have been made in the past; it's too late once the change has happened to go back a few years and make the observations, but it is very hard to convince sponsors to measure things that they think are stable. In the Countryside Surveys, we try and measure the commonplace through representative sampling, our methodology has allowed us to translate all our surveys into Broad Habitats developed following the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 through the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. We attempt to monitor the extent and condition of habitats for the whole of Britain which includes changes in flora, fauna, soil, water and the physical environment.

We continue to gain funding by being flexible and addressing issues that Government or the general public feel are important. Recently we have answered questions on the distribution of ash trees (Fraxinus exlelsior) which are suffering unforeseen dieback, in the early 1990s we looked at hedgerow loss, our data have underpinned studies looking at the impacts of pollution (e.g. critical loads for acid rain, sulphur and nitrogen) and are used in models looking at agri-economics and energy. None of these issues were in the original concept for the survey.

Once established it may seem easier to continue getting funding, but in a harsh economic climate you are only as good as your answers to the current problems!