Long-term ecological monitoring is a methodological framework involving repeated, standardized measurements of biotic and abiotic variables over extended timescales (typically decades) to quantify ecological dynamics, detect trends, and assess responses to natural variability and anthropogenic perturbations. It relies on consistent sampling designs, fixed plots or stations, calibrated instrumentation, and strict protocols to ensure temporal comparability and statistical robustness. Core components include selection of indicator species or ecosystem attributes, temporal replication sufficient to capture slow processes and rare events, and integration with metadata, quality control, and archiving systems. These methods enable inference about ecosystem resilience, regime shifts, and long-term trajectories, and often underpin validation of ecological models and environmental policy assessments.
Across a narrow watershed in Asakura, a rural city in Fukuoka Prefecture, centuries-old stone channels still guide water through fields and into the river below. Today, those same systems are the focus of researchers at Kyushu ...
Environment
Jul 11, 2026
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A single monitoring network developed by McGill, Natural Resources Canada, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Dalhousie University researchers can simultaneously track earthquakes, water behavior, human activity and ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 9, 2026
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10
A study published in Ecography has assessed how climate change may be destabilizing interactions between predators and prey in the wild—specifically, how owl–prey interactions have responded to environmental variability and ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 8, 2026
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8
Unexpectedly low calf numbers within the spinner dolphin population off Hawaiʻi Island were revealed in a study led by scientists with the Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, along ...
Ecology
Jul 7, 2026
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A new study published in the journal Alpine Entomology has found that alpine butterflies in the Swiss National Park are closely matching the pace of local warming in their range shift to higher elevations.
Plants & Animals
Jul 6, 2026
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7
This year's surveys of gray seals in the Wadden Sea and on Helgoland once again show an upward trend. During the 2025–2026 survey year, 3,385 pups and 12,497 gray seals were recorded during the molting period. The results ...
Ecology
Jul 2, 2026
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4
Abandoned farmland can be transformed into wildflower-rich grassland habitat without the need for expensive and labor-intensive seeding, a new study by UCL researchers finds.
Plants & Animals
Jul 2, 2026
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216
A study titled "Monitoring major biodiversity stronghold in war zones: model predicts Lake Chad remains Africa's most important wetland for waterbirds" estimates that Lake Chad supports nearly 2.5 million waterbirds, making ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 1, 2026
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46
For millennia, farming in Switzerland did not reduce plant diversity but helped increase it, University of Basel researchers have shown in a detailed reconstruction covering the past 7,000 years. Only recent decades paint ...
Ecology
Jun 30, 2026
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14
The number of plant species in many ecosystems in Europe has grown rather than shrunk over the last 100 years. However, this is not necessarily cause for celebration, as this local increase is primarily due to generalists ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 29, 2026
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