California EMAP 1999

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) mission is to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment. Policies and programs that promote the preservation of ecosystem integrity and sustainable use of natural resources are key elements in achieving that mission. The policies are then implemented through the EPA’s ten regional offices and the appropriate state agencies. These policies must be formulated with a sound scientific knowledge of the environment. As the Agency’s research arm, the Office of Research and Development (ORD), provides the scientific and technical support to develop that knowledge. A key part of the support ORD provides is the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP). This program represents a major element of ORD’s effort to support monitoring and increase our understanding of the nation’s ecological resources. EMAP is designed to develop sound scientific approaches to monitoring important ecosystem characteristics and the human perturbations that alter them over space and time.

Developing the tools necessary for measuring the condition of many types of ecological resources and the designs for describing status and detecting both spatial and temporal trends was a significant challenge. EMAP responded to this challenge by developing indicators of ecological condition, along with new monitoring designs for major classes of natural resources such as forests, wetlands, deserts, agricultural systems, and surface waters. The resulting data would be used to evaluate the cumulative success of current policies and programs and to identify emerging problems before they become widespread or irreversible. The Coastal component sampled small coastal estuaries in Washington, Oregon and California during 1999. Here we report the results for California.

Monitoring Objectives

• Estimate current status, trends, and changes in selected indicators of the nation’s ecological resources on a regional basis with known confidence.
• Seek associations between selected indicators of natural and anthropogenic stresses and indicators of the condition of ecological resources.
• Provide annual statistical summaries and periodic assessments of the nation’s ecological resources.

Survey Area