ABSTRACT
Scientific assessment is the second component of our Closed-Loop Watershed Health Monitoring Model. In this chapter, we describe why it is an important component of any successful monitoring program. We describe some techniques for performance evaluation and propose a framework for surveillance monitoring (Section 3.3) that enables practitioners to stratify sampling effort according to the types and severity of impairments likely to be found in watersheds based on their size and land use patterns. We also deal with data quality assurance (Section 3.4) as well as with geographic information systems (GIS) and modeling tools (Section 3.5).
