Reconnaissance Surveys

Reconnaissance surveys have a very simple design and are used to check for species in likely habitats. Surveys such as these determine presence/not detected and are not appropriate for studying species habitat correlations because the sampling design is consciously biased.

Example 1: Based on past studies, you know that Spade-foot toads breed in a specific pond. You have a small budget and not much time. You just need to check the pond for toads.

Example 2: You want to check a study area for tailed frogs because you have previously discovered the frogs in a nearby stream. You select sample stations based on logistics (streams with roads that are nearby) but you try to examine as many stream reaches as possible within the study area. You are trying to determine how many of the streams have tailed frogs.

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*Photos courtesy of Jared Hobbs