Schmeller Dirk S, Henry Pierre-Yves, Julliard Romain, Gruber Bernd, Clobert Jean, Dziock Frank, Lengyel Szabolcs, Nowicki Piotr, Déri Eszter, Budrys Eduardas, Kull Tiiu, Tali Kadri, Bauch Bianca, Settele Josef, Van Swaay Chris, Kobler Andrej, Babij Valerija, Papastergiadou Eva, Henle Klaus
Station d'Ecologie Expérimentale du CNRS à Moulis, 09200 Saint Girons, France.
Conserv Biol. 2009 Apr;23(2):307-16. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01125.x. Epub 2008 Dec 11.
Without robust and unbiased systems for monitoring, changes in natural systems will remain enigmatic for policy makers, leaving them without a clear idea of the consequences of any environmental policies they might adopt. Generally, biodiversity-monitoring activities are not integrated or evaluated across any large geographic region. The EuMon project conducted the first large-scale evaluation of monitoring practices in Europe through an on-line questionnaire and is reporting on the results of this survey. In September 2007 the EuMon project had documented 395 monitoring schemes for species, which represents a total annual cost of about 4 million euro, involving more than 46,000 persons devoting over 148,000 person-days/year to biodiversity-monitoring activities. Here we focused on the analysis of variations of monitoring practices across a set of taxonomic groups (birds, amphibians and reptiles, mammals, butterflies, plants, and other insects) and across 5 European countries (France, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland). Our results suggest that the overall sampling effort of a scheme is linked with the proportion of volunteers involved in that scheme. Because precision is a function of the number of monitored sites and the number of sites is maximized by volunteer involvement, our results do not support the common belief that volunteer-based schemes are too noisy to be informative. Just the opposite, we believe volunteer-based schemes provide relatively reliable data, with state-of-the-art survey designs or data-analysis methods, and consequently can yield unbiased results. Quality of data collected by volunteers is more likely determined by survey design, analytical methodology, and communication skills within the schemes rather than by volunteer involvement per se.
如果没有健全且公正的监测系统，自然系统的变化对于政策制定者而言仍将是个谜，使他们对可能采取的任何环境政策的后果缺乏清晰认识。一般来说，生物多样性监测活动并未在任何大的地理区域内进行整合或评估。EuMon项目通过在线问卷对欧洲的监测实践进行了首次大规模评估，并报告了此次调查的结果。2007年9月，EuMon项目记录了395个物种监测方案，这些方案每年的总成本约为400万欧元，涉及46000多人，每年投入超过148000人日用于生物多样性监测活动。在此，我们重点分析了一系列分类群（鸟类、两栖动物和爬行动物、哺乳动物、蝴蝶、植物及其他昆虫）以及5个欧洲国家（法国、德国、匈牙利、立陶宛和波兰）监测实践的差异。我们的结果表明，一个方案的总体抽样工作量与参与该方案的志愿者比例相关。由于精度是监测地点数量的函数，且监测地点数量因志愿者参与而最大化，所以我们的结果并不支持那种认为基于志愿者的方案过于嘈杂而无法提供信息的普遍观点。恰恰相反，我们认为基于志愿者的方案在采用先进的调查设计或数据分析方法时能够提供相对可靠的数据，因此能够得出无偏差的结果。志愿者收集的数据质量更有可能由方案内的调查设计、分析方法和沟通技巧决定，而非志愿者参与本身。
