Design and Importance of Multi-tiered Ecological Monitoring Networks

Multi-scaled ecological monitoring networks offer significant potential to address a wide range of challenging environmental problems. Knowledge gained through these networks will be critical in understanding, detecting, and forecasting ecological changes that affect important ecological services upon which society depends. The networks will provide information necessary for societies to adapt to broad-scale changes such as those associated with land use, demographic, and climate change. Several new multi-tiered monitoring programs are being developed to evaluate ecological changes and associated drivers of change at a range of spatial and temporal scales. Additionally, existing ecological monitoring programs, such as the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, are attempting to improve their capacities to extrapolate results to larger spatial extents by developing a standard set of measures or indicators and by facilitating cooperation among scientists within and among the various monitoring networks. Despite these attempts, several issues remain in integrating existing monitoring programs. We discuss these issues and review existing programs within a multi-tiered monitoring framework that explicitly incorporates citizen-based monitoring. Direct involvement of the public is seen as a critical element in expanding and maintaining existing and new ecological monitoring networks. We provide examples of two emerging ecological monitoring networks, the Terrestrial Observatory Network (TERENO) and the USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN), to convey some of the complexities and challenges confronting the design and implementation of multi-tiered ecological monitoring networks.