Options for optimising the design and analysis of selected freshwater monitoring programmes in Wales

Descriptions

NRW’s Knowledge and Evidence department has responsibility for setting strategy and defining programmes of monitoring. This includes ensuring the fitness-for-purpose of monitoring designs. In the face of projected budgetary pressures, we need to explore options for modifying the amount of monitoring we undertake. To support our decision-making we wish to better understand the performance of existing monitoring designs, including their performance relative to alternative designs, and identify options for modifying them while retaining an adequate level of performance.Scope of the workMonitoring undertaken by NRW includes several programmes that have the purpose of detecting widespread temporal trends in selected environmental variables, much of this in the aquatic environment. This contract will focus on NRW’s monitoring of inland freshwaters within which a wide range of variables are recorded. Included within this is NRW’s monitoring of selected fish populations.Programmes such as these are expected to provide a national (all-Wales) overview of the state, and changes in the state, of these variables. Underpinning sampling regimes need to be, as far as possible, representative of the array of different water body types and broad environmental conditions present in Wales. The intention is that the network is capable of detecting trends arising from the action of pressures that might plausibly be thought to be affecting the environment, now or in the future.The purpose of this work is to explore the performance of existing, modified and other alternative schemes, using previously collected data; to make recommendations about changes to sampling designs and analytical approaches; and to provide supporting guidance and analytical tools for use by NRW.NOTE: The authority is using eTenderwales to carry out this procurement process. To obtain further information record your interest on Sell2Wales at http://www.sell2wales.gov.wales/search/search_switch.aspx?ID=70788