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Monitoring and Assessment—What to Measure … and Why

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Wetlands

Abstract

It is often difficult to know what to measure when conducting a wetland assessment. There are a wide variety of variables to consider across the three main parameters—water, vegetation, and soils. To complicate things even further, the aspect of time and space must be considered if you wish to be able to make sense of your assessment. We present a discussion of water, vegetation, and soils and then give our best judgment of which variables to measure for each, and why some might be more useful than others. The merits and problems with gathering data from single visits versus multiple visits are discussed, as well as the level of expertise needed in some instances for certain variables to be useful. We do not discuss assessment and inventory methods as these will follow once you chose your assessment variables most relevant to your goals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Landscape Architecture, Penn State University, 121 Stuckeman Family Building, 16802, University Park, PA, USA

    Charles A. Cole

  2. National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory—Western Ecology Division, United States Environmental Protection Agency, 200 S.W. 35th Street, 97333, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Mary E. Kentula

Authors
  1. Charles A. Cole
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  2. Mary E. Kentula
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Correspondence to Charles A. Cole .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental & Remediation Project, PECO Energy Company, Market Avenue 2301, Philadelphia, 19103, Pennsylvania, USA

    Ben A. LePage

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Cole, C.A., Kentula, M.E. (2011). Monitoring and Assessment—What to Measure … and Why. In: LePage, B. (eds) Wetlands. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0551-7_8

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