Data61, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Centre for Tropical Water & Aquatic Ecosystem Research, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
PLoS One. 2022 Jul 28;17(7):e0271930. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271930. eCollection 2022.
Monitoring programs are fundamental to understanding the state and trend of aquatic ecosystems. Sampling designs are a crucial component of monitoring programs and ensure that measurements evaluate progress toward clearly stated management objectives, which provides a mechanism for adaptive management. Here, we use a well-established marine monitoring program for inshore water quality in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia to investigate whether a sampling re-design has increased the program's capacity to meet its primary objectives. Specifically, we use bootstrap resampling to assess the change in statistical power to detect temporal water quality trends in a 15-year inshore marine water quality data set that includes data from both before and after the sampling re-design. We perform a comprehensive power analysis for six water quality analytes at four separate study areas in the GBR Marine Park and find that the sampling re-design (i) increased power to detect trends in 23 of the 24 analyte-study area combinations, and (ii) resulted in an average increase in power of 34% to detect increasing or decreasing trends in water quality analytes. This increase in power is attributed more to the addition of sampling locations than increasing the sampling rate. Therefore, the sampling re-design has substantially increased the capacity of the program to detect temporal trends in inshore marine water quality. Further improvements in sampling design need to focus on the program's capability to reliably detect trends within realistic timeframes where inshore improvements to water quality can be expected to occur.
监测计划是了解水生态系统状况和趋势的基础。采样设计是监测计划的关键组成部分，可确保测量结果评估朝着明确规定的管理目标取得的进展，为适应性管理提供了一种机制。在这里，我们使用澳大利亚大堡礁（GBR）近海水质的成熟海洋监测计划来调查重新设计采样是否提高了该计划实现其主要目标的能力。具体来说，我们使用自举重采样来评估在包括重新设计采样之前和之后的数据在内的 15 年近海海水质量数据集检测水质时间趋势的统计能力变化。我们在大堡礁海洋公园的四个单独研究区域对六个水质分析物进行了全面的功效分析，发现采样重新设计（i）提高了检测 24 个分析物-研究区域组合中 23 个组合的趋势的能力，以及（ii）平均提高了 34%检测水质分析物中增加或减少趋势的能力。这种功效的提高更多地归因于采样地点的增加，而不是采样率的提高。因此，采样重新设计大大提高了该计划检测近岸海水水质时间趋势的能力。进一步改进采样设计需要侧重于该计划在合理时间范围内可靠检测水质近岸改进的能力，在该时间范围内预计会发生水质趋势。
