Sampling Designs

Status

CHaMP Designs and updates are all tracked within the Monitoring Resources.

The Design Tracking provides a summary of the design changes over time as well as an inventory of the CHaMP designs that were used for each year of sampling.

Process

From 2011-2017 the CHaMP Design Team (Carol Volk and Matt Nahorniak, South Fork Research checked with all Organizations with active CHaMP designs to determine design needs for the upcoming field season. Each year the following steps were taken to review and update the designs for each watershed.

1. Programmatic and Watershed-specific needs that may affect study designs are collected by the Design Team

2. Sampling needs for AEM are collected. The AEM designs weren’t considered in the CHaMP designs, but the champmonitoring.org system required shifting of sites within blocks to ensure that sites that were sampled out of sequence in CHaMP to meet AEM needs. These sites were ‘refiled’ prior to the sampling in the next season. 2017 site adjustments were not refiled for 2018.

3. Design needs for Watershed-specific objectives and the Program are reviewed for each design within each watershed and proposed updates are discussed with each Organization.

4. Designs are drafted in MonitoringResources.org. If only slight modifications to designs are needed, then:

   1. Any change to the Frame, Sites, Panels, Number of Visits, Use Order, or Strata triggers a new design for the year. A design is cloned, renamed with the updated year at the end
   2. Changes to designs are noted in the MonitoringResources.org ‘Design’ or ‘Frame’ descriptions. All changes should be documented (e.g. list sites and use orders, strata affected, rationale, etc)
   3. The protocol name, organization, study duration, start year, and end year are reviewed for accuracy.
   4. Designs are finalized

If designs are modified such that a new GRTS draw is required, new strata are established, or the frame in englarged, a NEW design might be required. If this is the case, then the design documentation process in MonitoringResources.org is more involved.

1. In CHaMPmonitoring.org, finalized designs are then registered in the Design References tab. One must have a “Designer” Role in CHaMPmonitoring.org to complete this task. Registration of designs takes place immediately. If an error occurs, the design should be reviewed in MonitoringResources.org.

   1. Troubleshooting Design Registration. When designs do not appear in CHaMPmonitoring.org as expected, these are common issues to review:
      1. Design is not active for the year. The start year and panel duration of the design must cover the current-year field season. For example, if a design started in 2011 and is a 5 year design, the design will only be active for 2011-2016 and will not appear for 2017. To resolve this issue, edit the design in monitoring resources to ensure the start year and panel duration cover the year (aka iteration) in the champ system.
      2. Duplicate site registration. A site can only be incorporated into 1 design in the system. Ensure other designs from other years are not utilizing the site.

2. In CHaMPMonitoring.org review Design in Field Support tab to ensure sites were registered.

Survey Design Analyses and Summaries

See Spatially-Balanced Design Analyses for information on the follow-up analysis procedures for GRTS-based designs.

Within-Year Repeat Designs

The repeat design for CHaMP has changed multiple times since 2011.

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