The above design treats the study as a fully-designed experiment.

However, impact and control stations

are not randomly assigned to the locations. There is only one treatment area. Hurlbert [10] criticized the
analysis of data from impact studies as being statistically incorrect because of this problem. An
alternative is to recognize that the impact site represents a treatment that the researcher cannot
control. One tries to assess changes in the site due to the potential impact. Thus the approach is based
on comparing before and after. To account for problems of natural change, the impact area is paired to
another area, which is referred to as the control area. This approach was suggested by Eberhart [3] and
referred to as the control–treatment pairing (CTP) design (see also [1]). The approach was popularized
by StewartOaten et al. [21] and became known as the BACI model, although it is better to refer to it as a
BACI paired (BACIP) model to avoid confusion with the unpaired design. The layout described in [21]
follows. It is assumed known when the potential impact or activity will occur. Sampling is carried out on
tB occasions before the occurrence of the impact treatment and tA occasions after. Suppose the variable
of interest is denoted by X. The data are Xijk, with i referring to the period, j the occasion and k the
location of the site.