How do I go from collecting data to assessing the real problem?

You can collect the data, but turning it into an actual assessment of the environmental problem eludes you, the leap from numbers on a page to what they mean and what to do. That gap between gathering and judging is real, and standing at its edge does not mean you cannot cross it. Data is not the answer. It is the raw material for an answer. Assessment is the story you build from it: what is happening here, why, how bad, and what it means. That story comes from asking questions of the data, not just collecting more of it. What is unusual here? What would explain it? What does it threaten? The judgment lives in the questions, not the readings. With your next set of data, before gathering more, stop and ask what it is telling you and what it is not. Write a plain-language sentence: this suggests one thing, though I still need more to be sure. That sentence is the beginning of an assessment. You already know how to collect. Now you are learning to interrogate, and that is a skill that grows every time you make yourself ask what the numbers actually mean.