Part 7: When and How Often to Monitor

General Information on When to Monitor

When to monitor depends largely on your growing season and the grazing patterns of livestock and/or wildlife. Keep in mind that plant species with flowers or mature seed heads are easiest to distinguish.

Here are some general considerations for deciding when and how often to monitor:

• Records of regular observations can be important in assessing ranch land conditions, including wildlife habitat, grazing patterns, watershed areas, and animal concentrations. These may be performed on a day-to-day basis. However, this learning module focuses on the formal process of monitoring trends over time.
  
  
• Monitoring at different times throughout the year will give you different information and much different results . Plant growth and utilization changes considerably over the course of the year, so the time of year you monitor can significantly affect your results. Select the appropriate monitoring time for your ranch based on your monitoring goals and objectives. Here are some general times to monitor:
• When plant growth is at its peak
• At the particular stage of growth for a target species
• At the end of the growing season
• At the end of the grazing season
  
  
• Monitor at the same time, at the same site, every year, regardless of when you choose to monitor. This is critical because the definition of monitoring is to measure change over time. You need to be able to compare data from year to year so you must monitor the same site over the course of many years.
  
  
• Monitor during the same season of plant growth each year. Since growth conditions vary from year to year, monitoring date is not important but plant growth stage is important.