A biologist used the Internet to contact scientists around the world to obtain information about declining amphibian populations
. He was able to gather data on 936 populations of amphibians, consisting of 157 species from 37 countries. Results showed that the overall numbers of amphibians dropped 15% a year from 1960 to 1966 and continued to decline about 2% a year through 1997. What is the importance of collecting an extensive amount of data such as this?