The Scientific Potential of Environmental Monitoring

Over time environmental monitoring has produced an immense amount of data that was collected in order to assess environmental pollution impacts but also for ecological research. Although this research produced revelatory, valuable data and information on the structures and functions of ecosystems, amazingly few studies have focussed on the theoretical aspects of ecosystem evolution. This obviously is counter to the progress in the field of ecosystem theory and the provision of integrated concepts in relation to indicators of ecosystem performance. In this regard, the major intention and challenge of LTER (Long-Term Ecosystem Research) is to combine the theoretical background with the ecological knowledge already available in order to extrapolate monitoring information about environmental problems and to find solutions in line with recent progress at the global scale. With a view of ecosystem evolution in a long-term perspective and to support applied ecology with respective monitoring information, special methodical diligence has to be lenient towards temporal and spatial extrapolations. This focuses on problems of representativity and reference. The aim of this chapter is to inform the reader how information on ecosystems can be derived and the potentials and limitations of using available databases from monitoring in networks and results produced by integrated data evaluations in ecosystem research. Ideas on further optimisation of monitoring activities are also presented. Two environmental initiatives are presented as case studies including protection of forest ecosystems against the effects of atmospheric deposition (ICP-forests) and the definition of properties that define a good ecological state of aquatic ecosystems (European Water Directive); critical load indications and success control measures are respectively used and the benefits to environmental protection are discussed.