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Next Steps for the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program

Sam Droege

US Geological Service/Biological Resources Division
Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
12100 Beech Forest Road
Laurel, MD 20708-4038
email: frog@nbs.gov

The North American Amphibian Monitoring (AMP) Program was formed 2 years ago to develop a statistically-defensible set of monitoring programs for amphibians. The AMP group is not a membership organization and simply represents a loose confederation of committed individuals dedicated to supporting and developing large-scale monitoring programs. Two sets of strategy documents came out of those meetings, culminating this past February with the publication of a protocol for calling surveys for anurans (frogs and toads) and several sections outlining the little that was known about the statistical performance of monitoring techniques for other groups of amphibians. Future needs and directions were talked about in a general way, but specifics were few.

This meeting presents field work, computer work, and head work on amphibian monitoring from this past season. It's encouraging to see that over the course of the three meetings the level of statistical sophistication has increased as folks have dug deeper into the performance, variability, and biases of their techniques. I hope that the discussion sessions for many papers can become forums on the viability of the technique for long-term monitoring. The AMP group will want to distill the results of both the papers and the discussions into suggestions for protocols for aquatic amphibians, salamanders, and other amphibian groups.

I would like to suggest that this past February's document be revised this winter, updating it with the information taken from this meeting and from the associated listserve discussion groups. However, I think we should be much more proactive in our requests for further information. Not only would it be useful to talk about the type of information needed, as was done in this past document, but to now prescribe how it will be collected, including what experimental design to use. In this way folks who would like to get further involved will have a course of action laid out for them. In many instances this is the greatest hurdle - the fear of designing an experiment. In those instances where the statistical foundation is strong enough, then implementation plans and support groups can be formed around them.

The AMP process is an evolving one, there are no rules on how things should proceed. I have outlined a general strategy here, but there are, I'm sure, better alternataives. It would be good to hear and discuss those plans at this meeting. Please use the discussion button below to counter, denounce, refute, or augment what has been written here or outline alternative strategies.

Thanks.

U.S. Department of the Interior
U.S. Geological Survey
Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
Laurel, MD, USA 20708-4038
http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/naamp3/naamp3.html
Contact: Sam Droege, email: Sam_Droege@usgs.gov
Last Modified: June 2002