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6. The preferred designs for determining the effect of the Program over the entire <br />area of inference should include reference areas but true reference areas are <br />lacking (i.e., there is not another Platte River). Even at the project scale the <br />linear nature of the study area makes finding independent reference areas <br />difficult. Nevertheless, opportunities for using preferred designs containing <br />reference areas (e.g., BACI, CI, gradient response) will exist and should be <br />utilized at the project level. <br />7. Large portions of the study area are currently under various types of physical <br />management (e.g., tree clearing, discing, etc.). At the central Platte River <br />Scale this level of system flux will provide more opportunity to learn species <br />and habitat response to different management measures but will reduce our <br />ability to separate Program effects from other activities. At the project scale <br />this form of system noise can be avoided or at least accounted for in the <br />research design. <br />8. The preferred designs should allow a before/after analysis to determine <br />biological response to Program management, yet limited quantitative pre- <br />Program data exist. While there is a paucity of pre-Program data, there will be <br />opportunity to develop pre-project data for small scale project studies. In <br />addition, the combination of these smaller scale studies using optimum <br />designs with the Program level correlation and trend analysis will allow a <br />relatively powerful weight-of-evidence approach to determine the effect of the <br />Program on target species and their habitat.