Biological Monitoring in Perspective

Abstract

The diversity of biological monitoring/indicating processes should be apparent from a study of the preceding chapters. Whether or not biological monitoring/indicating is undertaken at the scale of sampling individual animal tissues (e.g. Chapter 5) or assessing the presence or absence of an individual plant species (e.g. Chapter 2), the value of the resulting information hinges upon two overriding factors. These are the aims of the exercise when it was instigated, and the purpose to which the resulting information is put. These two factors are not only closely related, but inseparable. Their importance in all biological monitoring programmes has been emphasised throughout this book. Biological monitoring and indicating are not new concepts, rather they are labels which have been attached to a much longer-lived subject, i.e., the process of investigation. This process occurs at a series of levels and any investigation that is envisaged at one reference level can rise during its operating time scale to another higher, or fall to another lower, level. The shortcomings and value of biological monitoring are thus essentially those to be expected from any investigative science. They can also be expected to change over the operating time scale according to the information accrued during the study and with the skill and investigative talent of the staff involved. Heavy metals in the environment, similarly, are not a new phenomenon, rather it is the level of attention which has been applied to them in recent years which is unprecedented and which determines the importance which we attach to them relative to other toxic materials.