Monitoring Ecological Impacts provides the tools needed by professional ecologists, other scientists, engineers, planners and managers to design assessment programs that can reliably monitor, detect and allow management of human impacts on the natural environment. The procedures described are well-grounded in inferential logic, and statistical models needed to analyse complex data are given. Step-by-step guidelines and flow diagrams provide the reader with clear and usable protocols, which can be applied in any region of the world and to a wide range of human impacts. In addition, real examples are used to show how the theory can be put into practice. Although the context of this book is flowing water environments, especially rivers and streams, the advice for designing assessment programs can be applied to any ecosystem.