ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces environmental monitoring and its applications. Environmental monitoring consists of measuring aspects of the environment in a repetitive manner over the long term to learn about its structure and functioning. Once this understanding is developed, knowledge is applied in multiple ways to manage the environment wisely. This chapter is an overview of many topics that will be covered throughout the book, such as data management, data analysis, instruments, precision, and accuracy. In addition, this chapter introduces random variables, exploratory data analysis, statistical inference, and linear regression..
