Biological monitoring programs for environmental protection require
techniques that will provide both early detection of possible adverse
effects, and assessment of the ecological significance of these effects.
Monitoring techniques must include responses sensitive to the impact,
that can be subjected to rigorous statistical analysis and for which
statistical power is high. Such issues in baseline research of 'what and
how to measure?' and 'for how long?' have been the focus of a program
being developed to monitor and assess effects of mining operations on the
effectively pristine, freshwater ecosystems of the Alligator Rivers Region
(ARR) in tropical northern Australia. Application of the BACIP design, utilising a form of temporal
replication, to univariate data (single species) and multivariate
(community) data is described. For new ventures in Australia (such as
mining), monitoring programs should be designed to establish with high
probability that an impact on the ecosystem no greater than a prescribed
amount has gone undetected - as opposed to simply allowing
development to continue as long as 'proof' of impact is not available.
Such a precautionary approach represents a shifting of the 'burden of
proof' and would require with the BACIP design, a minimum number of
baseline years in order to achieve some desired level of statistical power
in a test for impact. Power analyses conducted on two to five years
(depending upon the technique) of baseline data from streams of the ARR
indicate that the BACIP design would not impose developmental
constraints on mining and that a policy of reversal of the burden of proof
would provide the cornerstone required for managing such development
in an ecologically sustainable manner.