Proposal for Writing Monitoring Protocols Draft (2)

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Committee and the Executive Director's office do not expect to anticipate all the potential problems in implementing the new monitoring program. Therefor it will be necessary for statisticians, GIS personnel, administrators, and others to spend time in the field observing and participating in collection of monitoring data in order to fully understand these practical limitations and to insure that the data will be analyzed properly. Modifications to SOPs during implementation will likely be necessary in newly developed protocols as well as those existing protocols that are adapted for the Program. These activities and costs are not included in the budget of the present proposal. The Executive Director's office has been assisting the Technical Committee in developing the least tern and piping plover protocol (monxtoring potential and known nesting habitat, distribution and number of breeding pairs, and reproductive success of least terns, and piping plover in the central Platte valley). We expect a similar procedure will take place in the development of the remaining protocols. These efforts have been conducted through the current Executive Director's budget and have resulted in a draft protocol for the study design and methods sections that is near completion (see attached draft). Work has not been started for the administration, data sheet and evaluation of existing data sections. The process used to develop the protocol to its current point has been an iterative process of draft preparation and review. This iterative process will be continued in develaping the remaining sections of the protocol. This same type of iterative process would also be employed in developing all new protocols, as well as in evaluating and modifying existing protocols. The Technical Committee and the Executive Director's office anticipate that protocols one, three, five, and seven will require extensive wark, as no existing protocols have been identified for these activities as of the date of this proposal. Identifieation and Evaluation of Existing Data If data exists, a portion of each protocol will include an evaluation of the feasibility of using the data for before/after analysis and other potential analyses during evaluation of the Program. Data sets to be evaluated are those original sources identified in the draft "Documentation of Existing Conditions in the Central Platte Valley." The evaluation will include development of a "decision matrix". The decision matrix will involve identifying or confirming such things as, are variables clearly and consistently defined from year to year, are there typographic errors in the data set, are original field data sheets available, what form are the data in (e.g., electronic, hard copy), are there obvious errors or missing data, can the data be traced back to an unique site, and are the data derived (madel based) or empirical (raw). Additionally, the decision matrix will be used to evaluate the data for inclusion in a database developed by protocol seven (designing, implementing, and maintaining a database for long-term storage and retrieval of data and reports generated through monitoring and research). The evaluation of existing data will also include recommendations regarding the adequacy of inethods used (e.g., existence of written methods, evidence of probability based sampling, biased methods), relevancy of the resulting data (e.g., maps identifying least tern reproductive habitat), and usability of the data in the Program (e.g., trend analysis, before/after analysis). After data sets are identified and the initial decision matrix has been completed, a siznple data analysis will be conducted as another means to identify potential problems in data sets. In most instances, the Executive Director's office will conduct the small data analysis, but there may be data sets for which another entity is better suited to canduct the analysis (e.g., Bureau of Reclamation in the analysis of GIS data). As an example of a simple data analysis, the mean clutch size of least terns with 95% confidence intervals could be calculated with available data. December 3, 1999 Draft Proposal for Writing Monitoring Protocols