ABSTRACT
Sampling and recording are essential activities for characterising the biodiversity of a location, identifying distinctly different assemblages of species and establishing where there are rare or threatened species and habitats. This chapter gives examples of the hierarchical way in which surveys may be undertaken and the methods that may be used, but it is critical of some techniques that may be cherished but do not deliver the information or evidence required for conservation. It nishes by providing examples of matching survey methods to conservation objectives. The surveys described in this chapter are descriptive surveys and, although they can be repeated to identify change, are not the monitoring studies described in Chapter 10. Neither is this chapter about the technical application of equipment or the identication of methods according to the statistics that are used to analyse data. That information can be found in volumes such as Eleftheriou (2013).
