The Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) is a comprehensive, multiagency program designed to assess the condition of the nation's ecological resources at national, regional, and subregional scales. Data and information collected by EMAP will be integrated with data from other monitoring programs and environmental information of other types to produce periodic environmental assessment reports. These reports will assess the extent and magnitude of pollution impacts, report trends, describe relationships among indicators of ecological condition, contaminant exposure, and environmental stress, identify the likely causes of poor ecological condition, and evaluate the overall effectiveness of regulatory and control programs on regional scales. Using hypothetical data and a fictional estuarine system, this example report demonstrates the types of information that EMAP can provide and how that information can be interpreted in the context of national environmental policy.

Microfiche.