From May 4-7, 2021, the Society for Ecological Restoration – Rocky Mountain Chapter hosted a webinar series focused on sampling designs and tools for ecological restoration monitoring. The SER-RM Outreach Commitee’s Dr. Michael Curran & Dr. Jana Heisler-White organized the workshop which included speakers Dr. Tim Robinson (Univ. of Wyoming – Dept. of Statistics), Dr. Blair Robertson (Univ. of Canterbury – School of Mathematics & Statistics), and Mr. Sam Cox (Bureau of Land Management – State of Wyoming).
Dr. Robinson’s talk focuses on a 10-step, evidence-based roadmap for biological monitoring programs, which he tailors to various ecological restoration projects.
Dr. Robertson focuses on spatially balanced sampling designs for ecological & environmental monitoring.
Sam Cox focuses on using imagery to monitor vegetation and he discusses some of the free software tools he has developed which can be found at www.samplepoint.org
A link to the webinar can be found here: https://www.ser.org/news/565466/SER-RM-Workshop-Practical-Tools-and-Sample-Designs-for-Ecological-Restoration-Monitoring.htm
Some research articles by Dr. Curran and all speakers can be found on Abnova’s publication page at: https://abnovaecology.com/publications/ The articles from 2019 (in Restoration Ecology) and 2020 (in Biodiversity) specifically focus on spatially balanced sampling design (utilizing Dr. Robertson’s Balanced Acceptance Sampling), route optimization (utilizing the Traveling Salesman Problem), and remote sensing (handheld and drone imagery) to monitor reclamation & restoration efforts on natural gas well pads in Wyoming.
The paper in Restoration Ecology demonstrates how Balanced Acceptance Sampling (BAS) can be used to generate good spatial coverage of an area of interest, how handheld imagery can improve data quality and greatly reduce time compared to traditional methods, and how the combination of handheld imagery and spatially balanced sampling can be used to satisfy regulatory criteria and improve reclamation practices.
The paper in Biodiversity compares drone imagery to handheld imagery using the same sampling design above. To increase field-efficiency, the Traveling Salesman Problem was solved to optimize routes for walking and drone flight. We showed data from drones was similar to that of handheld imagery and we also found the drone flights to take ~7.5 minutes per location (compared to traditional techniques which take 2-person teams ~99 minutes per location).
