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03/15/2001 14:46 FAX 6514528940 MENDOTA HGTS MN 006 Dakota County (MN) Wetland assessment, Monitoring,and Awareness Project, • Revision 4,June 5, 1998 Page 11 of 50 more information is needed about land use impacts on wetland health,then professional evaluation might be required. 3. Information and measurements needed to make the decision: Citizens and Professionals participating in the WHEP will follow protocol developed by MPCA for monitoring invertebrates and vegetation. The MPCA will provide training to the citizen volunteers and technical experts on the protocol and metrics. The citizen monitoring coordinator will visit each team at one site in the field and once in the laboratory to verify that the team is following the protocol and understands how to record the metrics. The citizen monitoring coordinator will collect and review all data sheets and receive the QA invertebrate samples and deliver them to the QA officer to be checked. QA officers will be available to provide technical expertise to citizen teams and technical experts as requested. 4. Boundaries (area and time) to which the decisions will apply: Dakota County is an urbanizing county in the southern part of the MinneapolWSt. Paul metropolitan area. All but one of the cities participating in the project had more than a ten percent population growth between 1990 and 1993. For the county as a whole,the population is projected to grow from 275,000 in 1990 to over 460,000 by 2020, with most of that population growth occurring in the W 4EP project area. Dakota County, the seven watershed management organizations, and individual cities have identified wetlands as a priority concern since the early 1980s. By state law, each city makes decisions about wetlands under their jurisdiction. There is consensus that at least five years of data would be needed to get an overall picture of wetland health. The WHEP provides for the first or second year of data depending on the city participating. 5. How the environmental data will be summarized and used to make that decision: BRW, Inc_ was selected through a Request for Proposal process to provide technical and analytical services for the WHEP. BRW will compare the data collected by the citizen teams to the data collected by the technical experts_ BRW will look for trends in the data from the whole range of wetland sites comparing the method of data gathering by citizen volunteers to that used by technical experts. Completed data sheets and a copy of the analysis completed by BRW will be provided to Dakota County, the cities,the Minnesota Zoo,the MPCA, and US EPA Region 5. 6. Aceeytable error rates considering the consequences of making arr incorrect decision The detection limits for biological wetland health methods include - Ninety percent of the data must be accurate to be considered useable- - Comparison of citizen-gathered data to that gathered by technical experts. - Evaluation of sampling order to determine if procedures improved with practice- It will be recommended that reference sites be sampled last. - For the biological "matrix" of invertebrate and vegetation IBIS we would also see if the data is used for: - Environmental education of citizens.