Assessment of the historical environmental changes from a survey of local residents in an urban–rural catchment
When attempting to address the environmental problems of a catchment, it is important to consider changes in a long-term environmental context. However, the long-term data on the state of the environment that are required for such an examination are rarely documented. Such data collection typically requires several years of investigation and observation. In addition, as there may be a significant time lag between the occurrence of a phenomenon and its cause, subsequent environmental investigations of changing animal and plant states scaling up to 5 years may be inadequate.