Assessment 1 – Short
Communication Report
Environmental Survey and Monitoring: 2024 - 2025
Overview of Short Communication Reports
You are to write to short summary reports on a given environmental survey approach that has been undertaken during the course. The reports should outline the study site, aims and objectives, the methods used and briefly an analysis of the results that were gathered.
These reports are designed to provide the reader with a concise but informative overview of what you did, the findings and some brief interpretation of the outputs. They are not comprehensive assessments of an approach, but rather an example of the application of an approach to measuring the environment.
Guidance
The information provided below is for guidance only. You do not have to strictly adhere to every suggestion, but ideally follow the main points:
Structure
The report should follow the suggested structure:
1. Introduction
Introduce the subject area, the concepts behind the monitoring approach and the rationale for the application. You should aim to provide anon-expert a good foundation to understand the remainder of the report and highlight why the approach can be useful for environmental investigations.
2. Methods and Data
Describe the application of the survey approach to a set of data or an environmental problem. Here you should describe data collection techniques (either the physical approaches to gathering primary data or the electronic sources), their alternation or transformation if required and the software used for analysis. You should be explicit but brief here – we do not need to know every step of the procedure but should have an idea of what was completed.
3. Results and Analysis
Here you should present 1-2 (2 max) key figures (i.e. charts, graphs, illustrations, tables etc) and briefly describe the results and what they mean. In this section it is important to display information clearly and effectively, but do not provide interpretations at this stage.
4. Discussion and Conclusion
Concisely, evaluate the findings considering relevant literature (1-2 key references) and reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of the approach in relation to providing information to inform environmental management, policy or other end users of the monitoring approach.