The widespread use of synthetic chemicals has raised growing concerns about their potential impact on human health and the environment. In response, long-term monitoring programs have been established to track chemical levels in water, people, and the broader environment. These programs are essential for informing policies and management decisions, but they are not always designed in a way that makes it easy to detect important changes over time. This project aimed to improve the design of such programs by using computer simulations to test how different sampling strategies—such as how often samples are collected or how many locations are included—affect the ability to identify trends. The research focused on three major Australian monitoring programs related to marine ecosystems, human chemical exposure, and wastewater. It also resulted in the development of three interactive web tools that allow users to explore and compare different monitoring designs.
Research Outputs
Conference Abstracts
Taucare, G., Bignert, A., Kaserzon, S., Thai, P., Mann, R., Gallen, C. Detecting long temporal trends of photosystem II (PSII) herbicides in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon, SETAC-AU Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 30 August - 2 September 2021.
