Purpose:

Help you develop a clear monitoring question that will guide all your survey decisions. The objectives are to ensure that:

• Your question is specific and answerable with available resources
• You know what changes you're looking for (positive, negative or neutral)
• You can identify what to measure to detect those changes
• Your monitoring results will inform management decisions on Country

What is your monitoring question?

A monitoring question is the most important part of survey design. It will guide all other survey design decisions. You can work out your monitoring question using these steps:

1. Decide what you want to know more about.
   • This may be checking if your management is working, or if important species are thriving, or disappearing from Country.
     
     
2.  Consider what kind of change you are looking for.
   • What would you expect to see if things are going well? What would you expect to see if things are not going well? For example:
     1. Feral cat management IS working = More small mammals and reptiles.
        Feral cat management IS NOT working = The same number, or less small mammals and reptiles.
     2. Wrong-way fire = Less long-unburnt spinifex for night parrots to live in.
        Right-way fire = The same amount, or increasing long-unburnt spinifex for night parrots to live in.
        
        
3. What is the best thing to measure to detect change?
   • What specific thing can you actually count, observe, or measure that will tell you if good or bad changes are happening?
   • You can measure the habitat a species needs, or the species itself, or both (this may depend on the resources and expertise you have available).
   • Using the previous examples:

1. 1. 1. Feral cat management → Measure: small mammal and reptile abundance
      2. Fire management → Measure: area/patches of long-unburnt spinifex OR night parrot calling activity

Some common types of monitoring questions:

• Is [species] still present in this area?
• Are [species] numbers increasing or decreasing?
• Is our [management action] working to decrease [threat]?
• Is the current level of harvest of [bush food] causing a decline?
• Which area has more species diversity - area A or area B?
• How quickly do [species] return after [disturbance/management]?
• Are invasive species spreading or being controlled?

Choose your monitoring method.

Once you know what you want to measure, go to the relevant species, threats, and methods pages on this website to help you decide which monitoring method (cameras, traps, acoustic recordings, etc.) is best for your situation.

Next step:

Use the Survey Design Guidance to plan your survey locations, timing, and frequency.