How might we monitor environmental change?

There are three things to structure this answer: identifying a baseline, identifying a scale, and noting any drawbacks of the methodology. Central to all three is the ability to define what we mean by environmental change: in this case we may choose to define environmental change as any variation in environmental variables- be it temperature, rainfall, species distribution, or otherwise.


A baseline (a picture of what the current environmental state is) provides a baseline of sorts that we can compare any future measurements with- this allows us to monitor change in relation to some defined baseline. You also need to consider the scale of what you're looking at- is the system at the local scale, the national scale, or the global scale? These all have different methods associated with them; methodology is scale-dependent. Take the example of the local scale. Let's say we're looking at a local forest ecosystem and are focusing on a particular bird species. To monitor change we would need to know: How many birds we have at the moment, perhaps their current reproduction rate (estimated through observations), and where they are in the forest. Over time, you can monitor bird calls to monitor activity and see if their location moves. In other cases, you may be more concerned with the direct impacts of environmental change on the human population- this might require methods like oral histories, interviews or focus group discussions .With a larger scale system, say an entire ocean for instance- you may well rely on devices such as argo floats to monitor the heat of the oceans. Regardless of the methods chosen, it is key to acknowledge the advantages and disadvantages of each of the methods. Whenever you look to monitor environmental change, you ought to acknowledge the reliability of any monitoring undertaken- can your data be trusted? In other words, does your method of monitoring environmental change provide a picture that is both accurate and reliable?