Ongoing monitoring of natural areas is critical to ensuring the long term management of biodiversity within any Natural Area Environment. Weed monitoring is important for identifying areas with weed populations, weed spread, discovering new weeds on a site, protecting significant native flora species and for measuring the effectiveness of weed control measures. Weed management can be modified according to weed monitoring results. There are numerous different approaches to weed monitoring including weed mapping, taking of photographs, identification of weed species and their distribution (observational weed monitoring).