Depending on what questions you want macroinvertebrate data to help you answer, the planning process can be fairly simple (e.g., for education or single site monitoring) or very elaborate (e.g., for a large scale, basin-wide assessment or for evaluating particular human influences over a landscape). Such a wide range of possibilities for investment of time and resources underscores the importance of determining the questions you are trying to answer and setting clear goals for your monitoring program (Step 1) as the first stage of the sampling process.

The step-by-step instructions and questions that follow will help lead you through the planning process and will ultimately help you avoid some potential pitfalls that could affect the quality of your data or the enjoyment of your sampling event. Throughout this section, the ten major steps of the sampling process are included to the left of the title, allowing you to move to the different topics as you wish.

To aid in your planning, a rough timeline for the steps in the sampling process is provided below. This timeline is geared toward a large scale monitoring effort that involves fundraising and possible permitting requirements. If you're working on a smaller project (e.g. subsequent years of a monitoring program, sampling for education purposes only, or single site monitoring) you can reduce this timeline to a few months or even a few days if you already have your equipment.

Step 1 - Setting goals

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