PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #13: Success Criteria and Monitoring Restoration.
Presiding: D. Gluesenkamp
Monday, August 5. 1:00 PM to 3:45 PM. Mohave Meeting Room, TCC.

Using volunteers to monitor vegetation and gather quality research data.

Dietz, D.^*,1, Simmons, M.T.¹, Windhager, S.¹, ¹ Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, Texas

ABSTRACT- The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's Landscape Restoration Program is entering the second year of a long-term research project looking at how ecological processes and land management practices affect vegetation communities and individual plant species. Biannual monitoring of each of our 54 0.5ha research plots is an essential but time consuming aspect of this research. To obtain these extensive 'snapshot' data sets we rely heavily on volunteer data collectors who contribute hundreds of hours of time. Volunteer involvement, aside from augmenting our existing restoration education, allows for long-term research at a large scale by reducing the reliance on key staff members. Volunteers must attend an intensive training program where they learn field data collection methodology and plant identification. To test the accuracy of data collected in this manner, six transects were monitored by both a team of volunteers and a team of staff members in the spring of 2002. Three of the transects were sampled at the beginning of the monitoring schedule and three at the conclusion. Differences between the results of the volunteers and professionals and the effects of any learning curve will be discussed, and the effectiveness of using volunteers in research-based monitoring programs will be evaluated.

KEY WORDS: Volunteer, Monitoring, Research, Restoration