Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Long-term environmental monitoring for assessment of change: measurement inconsistencies over time and potential solutions

  • Published:
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The importance of long-term environmental monitoring and research for detecting and understanding changes in ecosystems and human impacts on natural systems is widely acknowledged. Over the last decades, a number of critical components for successful long-term monitoring have been identified. One basic component is quality assurance/quality control protocols to ensure consistency and comparability of data. In Norway, the authorities require environmental monitoring of the impacts of the offshore petroleum industry on the Norwegian continental shelf, and in 1996, a large-scale regional environmental monitoring program was established. As a case study, we used a sub-set of data from this monitoring to explore concepts regarding best practices for long-term environmental monitoring. Specifically, we examined data from physical and chemical sediment samples and benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages from 11 stations from six sampling occasions during the period 1996–2011. Despite the established quality assessment and quality control protocols for this monitoring program, we identified several data challenges, such as missing values and outliers, discrepancies in variable and station names, changes in procedures without calibration, and different taxonomic resolution. Furthermore, we show that the use of different laboratories over time makes it difficult to draw conclusions with regard to some of the observed changes. We offer recommendations to facilitate comparison of data over time. We also present a new procedure to handle different taxonomic resolution, so valuable historical data is not discarded. These topics have a broader relevance and application than for our case study.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Arrouays, D., Marchant, B. P., Saby, N. P. A., Meersmans, J., Orton, T. G., Martin, M. P., Bellamy, P. H., Lark, R. M., & Kibblewhite, M. (2012). Generic issues on broad-scale soil monitoring schemes: a review. Pedosphere, 22, 456–469.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Bakke, T., Green, A. M. V., & Iversen, P. E. (2011). Offshore environmental monitoring in Norway—regulations, results and developments. In K. Lee & J. Neff (Eds.), Produced water (pp. 481–491). NY: Springer (Chapter 25).

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Bakke, T., Klungsøyr, J., & Sanni, S. (2013). Environmental impacts of produced water and drilling waste discharges from the Norwegian offshore petroleum industry. Marine Environmental Research, 92, 154–169.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, J. R., Sisson, D. S., Smol, J. P., Cumming, B. F., Possingham, H. P., & Buckley, Y. M. (2014). Optimizing taxonomic resolution and sampling effort to design cost-effective ecological models for environmental assessment. Journal of Applied Ecology, 51, 1722–1732.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buss, D. F., Carlisle, D. M., Chon, T.-S., Culp, J., Harding, J. S., Keizer-Vlek, H. E., et al. (2015). Stream biomonitoring using macroinvertebrates around the globe: a comparison of large-scale programs. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 187, 4132. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-014-4132-8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cao, Y., & Hawkins, C. P. (2011). The comparability of bioassessments: a review of conceptual and methodological issues. Journal of the North American Benthological Society, 30(3), 680–701.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cochrane, S., Palerud, R., Wasbotten, I. H., Larsen, L. H., & Mannvik, H. P. (2009). Offshore sediment survey of Region I, 2008. Akvaplan-niva report no. 4215-02. Akvaplan-niva, Tromsø. 314 pp.

  • Desaules, A. (2012). Measurement instability and temporal bias in chemical soil monitoring: sources and control measures. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 184, 487–502.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellingsen, K. E. (2001). Biodiversity of a continental shelf soft-sediment macrobenthos community. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 218, 1–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellingsen, K. E. (2002). Continental shelf soft-sediment benthic biodiversity in relation to environmental variability. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 232, 15–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellingsen, K. E., & Gray, J. S. (2002). Spatial patterns of benthic diversity: is there a latitudinal gradient along the Norwegian continental shelf? Journal of Animal Ecology, 71, 373–389.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fontaine, A., Devillers, R., Peres-Neto, P. R., & Johnson, L. E. (2015). Delineating marine ecological units: a novel approach for deciding which taxonomic group to use and which taxonomic resolution to choose. Diversity and Distributions, 21, 1167–1180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frid, C. L. J., Harwood, K. G., Hall, S. J., & Hall, J. A. (2000). Long-term changes in the benthic communities on North Sea fishing grounds. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 57, 1303–1309.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fölster, J., Johnson, R. K., Futter, M. N., & Wilander, A. (2014). The Swedish monitoring of surface waters: 50 years of adaptive monitoring. Ambio, 43, 3–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gattuso, J.-P., Magnan, A., Billé, R., Cheung, W. W. L., Howes, E. L., Joos, F., et al. (2015). Contrasting futures for ocean and society from different anthropogenic CO2 emissions scenarios. Science, 349.

  • Gray, J. S., Clarke, K. R., Warwick, R. M., & Hobbs, G. (1990). Detection of initial effects of pollution on marine benthos: an example from the Ekofisk and Eldfisk oilfields, North Sea. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 66, 285–299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gray, J. S., Bakke, T., Beck, H. J., & Nilssen, I. (1999). Managing the environment effects of the Norwegian oil and gas industry: from conflict to consensus. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 38(7), 525–530.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hewitt, J. E., & Thrush, S. F. (2007). Effective long-term ecological monitoring using spatially and temporally nested sampling. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 133, 295–307.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hughes, B. (2014). Monitoring: garbage in yields garbage out. Fisheries, 39(6), 243–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/03632415.2014.915813.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hughes, R. M., & Peck, D. V. (2008). Acquiring data for large aquatic resource surveys: the art of compromise among science, logistics, and reality. Journal of the North American Benthological Society, 27(4), 837–859.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iversen, P. E., Green, A. M. V., Lind, M. J., Petersen, M. R. H., Bakke, T., Lichtenthaler, R., et al., (2011). Guidelines for offshore environmental monitoring: the petroleum sector on the Norwegian continental shelf. Climate and Pollution Agency. TA number 2849/2011. 49 pp.

  • Iversen, P. E. Lind, M. J., Ersvik, M., Rønning, I., Skaare, B. B., Green, A. M. V., et al., (2015). Guidelines for environmental monitoring of petroleum activities on the Norwegian continental shelf. The Norwegian Environment. Agency M-number M-300/2015. 60 pp. (In Norwegian).

  • Jensen, T., Gjøs, N., Nøland, S.-A., Oreld, F., Møskeland, T., Bakke, S. M., et al., (2000). Environmental monitoring 1999, Region I—Ekofisk. Technical report. Report no. 2000-3238. Det Norske Veritas & Sintef Applied Chemistry, Norway. 294 pp.

  • Kaiser, M. J., Clarke, K. R., Hinz, H., Austen, M. C. V., Somerfield, P. J., & Karakassis, I. (2006). Global analysis of response and recovery of benthic biota to fishing. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 311, 1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindenmayer, D. B., Burns, E. L., Tennant, P., Dickman, C. R., Green, P. T., Keith, D. A., et al. (2015). Contemplating the future: acting now on long-term monitoring to answer 2050’s questions. Austral Ecology, 40, 213–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindenmayer, D. B., & Likens, G. E. (2010). Effective ecological monitoring. London: CSIRO Publishing 170 pp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little, R. J. A., & Rubin, D. B. (1987). Statistical analysis with missing data. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loraine, A. E., Blakley, I. C., Jagadeesan, S., Harper, J., Miller, G., & Firon, N. (2015). Analysis and visualization of RNA-Seq expression data using RStudio, Bioconductor, and Integrated Genome Browser. Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N. J.), 1284, 481–501.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Mannvik, H. P., Pearson, T., Pettersen, A., & Lie Gabrielsen, K. (1997). Environmental monitoring survey Region I 1996. Main report. Akvaplan-niva report no. 411.96.996-1. Akvaplan-Niva, Tromsø. 246 pp.

  • Mannvik, H. P., Wasbotten, I. H., Cochrane, S., & Moldes-Anaya, A. (2012). Miljøundersøkelse Region I, 2011. Akvaplan-niva report no. 5339.02. Akvaplan-niva, Tromsø. 196 pp. (In Norwegian).

  • Mieszkowska, N., Sugden, H., Firth, L. B., & Hawkins, S. J. (2014). The role of sustained observations in tracking impacts of environmental change on marine biodiversity and ecosystems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 372, 20130339.

  • Nichols, J. D., & Williams, B. K. (2006). Monitoring for conservation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 21, 668–673.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norwegian Oil and Gas (2013). Environmental report 2013. The Norwegian Oil and Gas Association. http://www.norskoljeoggass.no/en/Publica/Environmentalreports/Environmental-report-2013/.

  • Nøland, S. A., Gjøs, N., Bakke, S. M., & Oreld F. (2003). Environmental monitoring 2002, Region I—Ekofisk. Main report. Technical report. Report no. 2003-0338. Det Norske Veritas/Sintef, Norway. 316 pp.

  • Nøland, S. A., Bakke, S. M., Rustad, I., & Brinchmann, K. M. (2006). Environmental monitoring Region I, 2005. Main report. Report no. 2006-0187. Det Norske Veritas, Norway. 344 pp.

  • Olsgard, F., & Gray, J. S. (1995). A comprehensive analysis of the effects of offshore oil and gas exploration and production on the benthic communities of the Norwegian continental shelf. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 122, 277–306.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R Core Team (2015). R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna. URL http://www.R-project.org/.

  • Renaud, P. E., Jensen, T., Wassbotten, I., Mannvik, H. P., & Botnen, H., (2008). Offshore sediment monitoring on the Norwegian shelf. A regional approach 1996–2006. Akvaplan-niva report no 3487–003. Akvaplan-Niva, Tromsø. 95 pp.

  • Ross, D. S., Bailey, S. W., Briggs, R. D., Curry, J., Fernandez, I. J., Fredriksen, G., et al. (2015). Inter-laboratory variation in the chemical analysis of acidic forest soil reference samples from eastern North America. Ecosphere, 6(5), 73. https://doi.org/10.1890/ES14-00209.1.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Terlizzi, A., Anderson, M. J., Bevilacqua, S., Fraschetti, S., Wlodarska-Kowalcuk, M., & Ellingsen, K. E. (2009). Beta diversity and taxonomic sufficiency: do higher-level taxa reflect heterogeneity in species composition? Diversity and Distributions, 15, 450–458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thrush, S. F., & Dayton, P. K. (2002). Disturbance to marine benthic habitats by trawling and dredging: implications for marine biodiversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 33, 449–473.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thrush, S. F., Ellingsen, K. E., & Davis, K. (2015). Implications of fisheries impacts to seafloor biodiversity and ecosystem-based management. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 73(Supplement 1), i44–i50. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsv114.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yoccoz, N. G., Nichols, J. D., & Boulinier, T. (2001). Monitoring of biological diversity in space and time. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 16, 446–453.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

KEE was supported by the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association (project no. 20-2013), the Norwegian Environment Agency (project no. 1204110 and 4013045), the Norwegian Research Council (project no. 212135), and Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA). NGY and TT were supported by NINA. We thank one anonymous referee for useful comments on this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fram Centre, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), P.O. Box 6606, Langnes, 9296, Tromsø, Norway

    Kari E. Ellingsen, Nigel G. Yoccoz & Torkild Tveraa

  2. Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 9037, Tromsø, Norway

    Nigel G. Yoccoz

  3. National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Judi E. Hewitt

  4. Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Simon F. Thrush

Authors
  1. Kari E. Ellingsen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Nigel G. Yoccoz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Torkild Tveraa
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Judi E. Hewitt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Simon F. Thrush
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kari E. Ellingsen.

Electronic supplementary material

Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article.

ESM 1

Online Resource 1. Table S1. Consulting companies responsible for fieldwork, identification of taxa, and laboratory analyses. (DOCX 16 kb)

ESM 2

Online Resource 2. Fig. S1. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) using faunal data based on the splitting procedure. Fig. S2. Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) using faunal data based on the splitting procedure. (DOCX 213 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ellingsen, K.E., Yoccoz, N.G., Tveraa, T. et al. Long-term environmental monitoring for assessment of change: measurement inconsistencies over time and potential solutions. Environ Monit Assess 189, 595 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-017-6317-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-017-6317-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation