Topic 7 – Environmental Monitoring -to measure the health of an environment, scientists will monitor ecosystems and the organisms that live there -this is known as ECOSYSTEM MONITORING a way of checking the condition of an ecosystem by comparing the result of investigation done at different times help to understand the impacts of disturbances and changes in the environment tries to reverse or reduce problems tries to reverse or reduce problems

4 Specific Areas of Monitoring Physical Monitoring -using satellites to track changes in landscape A new road built through the Amazon Rain Forest The same road viewed three years later after extreme deforestation.

2. Environmental Monitoring -tracks changes in climate, temperature and weather patterns

3. Chemical Monitoring -assesses the quality of air, soil, and water

4. Biological Monitoring -tracks the changes in organisms or populations of organisms

When Do We Monitor -there are two times when we can monitor: 1. Begins before a disturbance has occurred -look at which organism are living in the area to determine what is normal -we compare what we know about this ecosystem and compare it to other ecosystems of the same type to predict what will happen to these organisms in the future  

2. Begins after a disturbance has occurred -look to see how long it takes life to recover Ex. After a volcano, scientists were interested to see how quickly spiders would return to the destroyed areas (some spiders were blown in by the wind from over 50km away where they recolonized the site)  

Long-Term Monitoring -long-term monitoring allows us to make better decisions on the health of an organism or ecosystem Ex. If you just studied rabbit populations over 6 months and you saw that their population was going down, would it actually indicate that the species in danger of going extinct?

-to check the health of an environment over a long period of time we can use INDICATOR SPECIES an animal that is sensitive to changes in its environment its population will increase or decrease over time because of environmental conditions

Ex. Frogs and Amphibians because frogs and amphibians lay their eggs in the water, their offspring will be effect by any pesticides, acid rain, or other factors in the water -in general, frog populations world wide are on the decline

How to Monitor and Ecosystem -two things are essential to determining the health of an ecosystem: 1. Baseline Data data about the environment they are checking that has been gathered over a long period of time a starting point to determine if the environment is getting better or worse

2. Permanent Plots we can’t check everything so we will pick only certain areas (plots) to study we will go back to these year after year to see if the condition of these areas is getting better or worse these plots will act as a guide to determine the health of the rest of the area we are checking

Ex. Cranna Lake it is to difficult to study all of the lake so we will pick only about 10 spots around the lake to study we will use these plots to represent the entire lake

-once all this information is gathered, scientists can use this information to minimize human impact. -an ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT is a report that outlines how an activity will affect the environment -if changes are determined to be too serious, some developments may be stopped based on the results of the assessment