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Reports of closed beaches, restricted shellfish beds, oil spills, and ailing fisheries are some of the recent evidence that our marine environment is in trouble. More than $133 million is spent on marine environmental monitoring annually in the United States, but officials still do not have enough accurate information to make timely decisions about protecting our waters. This book presents the first comprehensive overview of marine monitoring, providing practical information and a model for revamping the nation's marine monitoring apparatus. The volume explores current monitoring programs and whether or not they work; the benefits and limitations of monitoring; the critical need for greater coordination among local, regional, and national monitoring programs; and a recommended conceptual model for developing more effective monitoring programs.
As the coastal human population increases in the United States, there will likely be increasing environmental and socioeconomic pressures on our coastal and estuarine environments. Monitoring the condition of all our nation's coastal and estuarine ecosystems over the long term is more than any one program can accomplish on its own. Therefore, it is crucial that monitoring programs at all levels (local, state, and federal) cooperate in the collection, sharing, and use of environmental data. This volume is the proceedings of the Coastal Monitoring Through Partnerships symposium that was held in Pensacola, Florida in April of 2001, and was organized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP), and the Council of State Governments (CSG). It contains papers that describe various multi-disciplinary coastal and estuarine environmental monitoring programs, designed and implemented by using regional and national partnerships with federal and state agencies, academia, Native American tribes, and nongovernmental organizations. In addition, it includes papers on modeling and data management; monitoring and assessment of benthic communities; development of biological indicators and interlaboratory sediment comparisons; microbiological modeling and indicators; and monitoring and assessment of phytoplankton and submerged aquatic vegetation. There are many components involved in determining the overall impacts of anthropogenic stressors on coastal and estuarine waters. It will take strong partnerships like those described in this volume to ensure that we have healthy and sustainable coastal and estuarine environments, now and in the future.
The current rate and scale of environmental change around the world makes the detection and understanding of these changes increasingly urgent. Subsequently, government legislation is focusing on measurable results of environmental programs, requiring researchers to employ effective and efficient methods for acquiring high-quality data. Envi
The Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program was created by EPA to develop the capability for tracking the changing conditions of our natural resources and to give environmental policy the advantages ofa sound scientific understanding of trends. Former EPA Administrators recognized early that contemporary monitoring programs could not even quantify simple unknowns like the number of lakes suffering from acid rain, let along determine if national control policies were benefiting these lakes. Today, adding to acidification impacts are truly complex problems such as determining the effects of climate change, of increases in ultraviolet light, toxic chemicals, eutrophication and critical habitat loss. Also today, the Government Performance and Results Act seeks to have agencies develop performance standards based on results rather than simply on levels of programmatic activities. The charge to EMAP of ecosystems is, therefore, the same today as it was a with respect to measuring the condition decade ago. We welcome the increasing urgency for sound scientific monitoring methods and data by efforts to protect and improve the environment. Systematic nationwide monitoring of natural resources is more than anyone program can accomplish, however. In an era of declining budgets, it is crucial that monitoring programs at all levels of government coordinate and share environmental data. EMAP resources are dwarfed by the more than $500 million spent on federal monitoring activities each year.
This report presents an initial approach to identifying and solving the problems of developing a monitoring system for Biosphere Reserves. To date, most proposals have only focused on the selection of Reserves, pollutants to monitor, etc.; the real-world problems of how to monitor and collect and preserve samples and of statistical considerations and the logistics involved, have not been considered. This report attempts to address these problems and proposes specific field work to determine what additional problems may be encountered and what research is still required to enable us to develop a responsive and cost-effective pollutant monitoring program for Biosphere Reserves. Items covered include sample site selection criteria, statistical considerations, pollutant level monitoring techniques suitable to background areas, the development of biological monitors and accumulators and the development and application of pollutant impact monitoring techniques. Quality assurance requirements are also discussed. The above subjects are set in a site-specific framework of Yellowstone National Park and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks.