Our fundamental approach to monitoring can be best described
as developing a protocol that is top down or strategic in nature, in which
an understanding of watershed processes is used to guide selection of the
most appropriate monitoring methods and sites. The figure below illustrates
the features of the top-down (versus bottom-up) approach that we have modified
from Landers (1997). Bottom-up, tactical approaches are site specific,
discipline focused, and methods driven. They are reductionist, not
holistic. A strategic approach is holistic, and when issues of hydrology
and sedimentology are paramount, then a watershed-based strategy is essential.
The critical connections between a strategic protocol design and monitoring
site implementation are (Landers, 1997):
1. Scientific understanding of the processes/function linkages of watershed
condition,
2. Consideration of environmental change at multiple temporal and spatial
scales, and
3. Knowledge to select robust indicators of environmental change.
Thus, our protocol development is not based upon the generation of specific,
new monitoring methods, for which there are many adequate examples.
Rather, it centers upon developing an overall strategy for holistically
monitoring rangeland watersheds. This strategy is based upon an understanding
of watershed processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales such that
the most appropriate methods for evaluating environmental change may be
selected.
Modified from Landers, 1997.
