<P>This book is an exciting reappraisal of the role and practice of biodiversity monitoring, showing how new technologies and software applications are rapidly maturing and can both complement and maintain continuity with the best practice in traditional field skills.</P><P></P><P>Environmental monitoring is a key component in a large number of national programmes and constitutes an important aspect of understanding environmental change and supporting policy development. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, <I>Monitoring Biodiversity </I>begins by discussing monitoring as an established field and examines the various budgetary and technological challenges. It examines different methodologies, the variation between countries, and the design features relevant to understanding monitoring systems created for new policy goals or different funding situations. The huge variety of methods revealed across 18 chapters, which vary from statistical designs to remote sensing, interviews, surveys,