Ellingsen Kari E, Yoccoz Nigel G, Tveraa Torkild, Hewitt Judi E, Thrush Simon F
Fram Centre, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), P.O. Box 6606, Langnes, 9296, Tromsø, Norway.
Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 9037, Tromsø, Norway.
Environ Monit Assess. 2017 Oct 30;189(11):595. doi: 10.1007/s10661-017-6317-4.
The importance of long-term environmental monitoring and research for detecting and understanding changes in ecosystems and human impacts on natural systems is widely acknowledged. Over the last decades, a number of critical components for successful long-term monitoring have been identified. One basic component is quality assurance/quality control protocols to ensure consistency and comparability of data. In Norway, the authorities require environmental monitoring of the impacts of the offshore petroleum industry on the Norwegian continental shelf, and in 1996, a large-scale regional environmental monitoring program was established. As a case study, we used a sub-set of data from this monitoring to explore concepts regarding best practices for long-term environmental monitoring. Specifically, we examined data from physical and chemical sediment samples and benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages from 11 stations from six sampling occasions during the period 1996-2011. Despite the established quality assessment and quality control protocols for this monitoring program, we identified several data challenges, such as missing values and outliers, discrepancies in variable and station names, changes in procedures without calibration, and different taxonomic resolution. Furthermore, we show that the use of different laboratories over time makes it difficult to draw conclusions with regard to some of the observed changes. We offer recommendations to facilitate comparison of data over time. We also present a new procedure to handle different taxonomic resolution, so valuable historical data is not discarded. These topics have a broader relevance and application than for our case study.
长期环境监测与研究对于检测和理解生态系统变化以及人类对自然系统的影响的重要性已得到广泛认可。在过去几十年里，已确定了成功进行长期监测的一些关键要素。一个基本要素是质量保证/质量控制协议，以确保数据的一致性和可比性。在挪威，当局要求对海上石油工业对挪威大陆架的影响进行环境监测，1996年设立了一个大规模的区域环境监测计划。作为一个案例研究，我们使用了该监测数据的一个子集来探讨长期环境监测最佳实践的相关概念。具体而言，我们检查了1996年至2011年期间六个采样时段来自11个站点的物理和化学沉积物样本以及底栖大型无脊椎动物群落的数据。尽管该监测计划已制定了质量评估和质量控制协议，但我们仍发现了一些数据方面的问题，如缺失值和异常值、变量和站点名称不一致、程序变更未校准以及分类分辨率不同等。此外，我们表明随着时间推移使用不同实验室使得就一些观察到的变化得出结论变得困难。我们提出了一些建议以促进不同时间数据的比较。我们还提出了一种处理不同分类分辨率的新方法，这样有价值的历史数据就不会被丢弃。这些主题的相关性和应用范围比我们的案例研究更广泛。
