Ecological monitoring is an essential component of protected areas’ adaptive management. It consists of monitoring the environment and systematically gathering information over time to answer one or more specific questions. It can also compare data on the protected area with predetermined and specifics standards or with a state of reference (number of animals of a given species at a specific time for instance) or a desired state (what would be the climax state of the vegetation in the absence of pressure?).

Ecological monitoring requires precise knowledge, techniques and data processing methods. All this can be explained, learned and applied.

Following this 4-module MOOC, you will acquire a good basis on what monitoring is and how it should be conducted. What is it meant for, which methods and techniques should be chosen, why, how to implement them? What are the statistical tools that you should know about to implement a good monitoring? Finally, the course provides practical examples of monitoring conducted in different environments and targeting different species, going from theory to practice.

In order to follow the course properly, you should expect to invest about 5 hours per week/module.

Classes start February 13 and end April 8.

More information is available here.