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TRANSFERRING TECHNOLOGIES, TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES: THE NATIONAL COASTAL ASSESSMENT
Citation:
Summers, J K. TRANSFERRING TECHNOLOGIES, TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES: THE NATIONAL COASTAL ASSESSMENT. Presented at Emerging Technologies, Tools and Techniques to Manage our Coasts in the 21st Century, Cocoa Beach, FL, Jan 28-31, 2003.
Description:
The purpose of the National Coastal Assessment (NCA) is to estimate the status and trends of the condition of the nation's coastal resources on a state, regional and national basis. Based on NCA monitoring from 1999-2001, 100% of the nation's estuarine waters (at over 2500 locations) were representatively sampled focusing on indicators describing the benthic community, fish community, water quality, sediment and tissue contamination, sediment toxicity, and SAV extent/condition. This estuarine monitoring is based on a probability-based sampling design implemented over a 75-day window during July-September. The use of probability sampling explicitly incorporates a confident characterization of uncertainty. It is this ability to design and calculate uncertainty that makes the NCA approach unique among monitoring approaches. These design capabilities further incorporate the desires of environmental decision-making officials (level of acceptable uncertainty) with sampling requirements to develop defensible data quality objectives (DQOs). The results of monitoring represent the first National Coastal Report Card delineating the condition of the nation's estuarine resources. The next report card on coastal condition is scheduled for 2003 and will be based on surveys
completed in 200-2001. Changes in these attributes from the early 1990s to the early 2000s will be examined and specific comparisons of differences among regional and state resources will be made. A discussion of the utility and benefits of the surveys to regional and state resource managers is provided in terms of planning, required evaluations of resource condition (305b), listing of impaired waters (303d), development of action plans (TMDLs) and permitting.