Principles into practice: monitoring of dredging projects

There are no simple answers to the question “what should the monitoring of my dredging project comprise of?” Instead, there exists a set of principles which can be followed to guide experienced professionals in the design of monitoring (see for example CEDA, 2015 and Laboyrie et al., 2018). Principles (theory) and practice (reality) are often different however. In this paper we seek to provide a useful (quick reference) summary of the key principles (and process) to apply to monitoring design. We provide an explanation of the reality arising from applying these principles in the case of the physical monitoring of a 30Mm3 dredge in a temperate estuarine system.