The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) released, November 28, 2015, Guidance Manual for Optimizing Water Quality Monitoring Program Design. The document provides an overview of existing approaches for optimizing monitoring program design with a review of the strengths and weaknesses of each as well as recommendations for those most appropriate for use under Canadian conditions and various monitoring requirements.

Case studies are provided as specific examples of how these approaches have been used and a step-by-step decision making framework is provided. Special emphasis is given to the technical aspects of monitoring network design. The document is intended to be useful in all Canadian provinces and territories. The verall goals of the guidance manual are to:

 

• identify strategies and tools to evaluate and optimize water quality monitoring networks in Canada;
• provide a step-by-step decision-making framework to guide managers in the selection of appropriate optimization methods that will strengthen monitoring programs (by becoming more effective and cost-efficient), while also promoting Canadawide consistency in program design;
• provide a toolbox of selected approaches for optimizing appropriate monitoring strategies with respect to i) water quality variables to be monitored; ii) temporal frequency; iii) spatial coverage (site location) to achieve the desired precision and confidence.

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