1. Determine which conditions to check, based on your goals for the project. For example, you might want to check the survival rate of new plants. The conditions you decide on are your parameters.

2. Determine a procedure that specifies when, how, and how often to measure your parameters. This procedure is your protocol.

In developing your procedure, consider any factors that are likely to impact the project:

• environmental factors, such as temperature, rainfall or animal predation
• end use factors, such as who will be using the data, what formatting is needed for a report, and whether there is a need to match someone else’s protocol, so that you can compare your results with theirs. If you want to do statistical analysis on your results, this would change the requirements for your protocol.
• resource factors, such as whether you have enough people to check an entire site. Usually test plots will be set up within a grid pattern for measurement, instead of measuring the entire site.
  

3. Train people who will be doing the monitoring how to follow the protocol; how to collect, record, and submit their data.

4. Implement the monitoring plan, and revise it as needed.