8

Monitoring threatened ecosystems

and ecological communities

David A. Keith, Belinda J. Pellow and Matthew Appleby

Summary

A diverse range of monitoring activities seek to characterise changes in threatened
ecological communities (TECs) in Australia. This chapter examines the
motivations for monitoring TECs, and discusses principles of monitoring directed
at different purposes, distinguishing surveillance from diagnostic monitoring. It
then reviews monitoring activity of TECs across Australia to assess the depth and
breadth of its coverage, who carries it out and why, the accessibility of monitoring
data and its effectiveness for managing TECs. It concludes with generalisations and
recommendations to make monitoring more comprehensive, rigorous, accessible
and effective for informing conservation of biodiversity.

Introduction

Ecological communities are assemblages of species populations that occur together
in space and time (Keith 2009). Ecosystems encompass these biotic components as