Monitoring Matters is a resource base for researchers and practitioners working with innovative approaches to monitoring of natural resources, livelihoods and governance.
“Monitoring is “the systematic measurement of variables and processes over time” and “assumes that there is a specific reason for that collection of data, such as ensuring that standards are being met.“.
– Monitoring Ecological Change, Ian F. Spellerberg, Cambridge University Press, 2005
The research focuses on:
- Ecosystem goods and services: How can community members monitor and detect local- and large-scale trends in natural resources and ecosystem services?
- Natural resource management: How can monitoring of natural resources encourage adaptive management and effective communication and collaboration between stakeholders?
- Climate change: How can innovative approaches to natural resource monitoring and management enhance the resilience of local communities to cope with climate variability and weather extremes? How can public involvement in monitoring strengthen carbon emission reduction and combat deforestation?
- Governance and social benefits: How can community members undertake their own monitoring of representation, accountability and transparency in natural resource governance? What are the options for employing existing participatory monitoring methods in measuring the de facto social benefits of natural resource management for local stakeholders?
- Inclusion, accessability and challenges in Citizen Science: How can citizen science helps to make scientific research more democratic, inclusive and accessible? How can citizen science practitioners ensure diversity and inclusion? How can you overcome some of the main challenges in citizen science, including ensuring data quality, addressing participant diversity, managing project logistics, and maintaining sustained engagement?
About Community Based Monitoring
Knowledge of changes in populations of species, habitat area or condition, and ecosystem services is often rudimentary. This presents a serious challenge for attempts to understand and reverse negative trends in natural resource values in many parts of the world.
Monitoring of natural resources can answer questions such as:
1) Are there increased benefits to local people from sustainable natural resource use?
Are habitats and ecosystems being degraded or improved?
Are the populations of individual species of plants and animals declining or increasing?
What are the causes?
Has management intervention the intended impact on the ecosystem?