"EPA/600-S4-91-026." "October 1991." At head of title: Project Summary. Caption title.

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. This report presents an example environmental assessment report for estuaries, one of seven types of ecological systems or resource categories to be monitored by EMAP. Using hypothetical data and a fictional estuarine system, the example demonstrates the types of information that will be provided by EMAP and how that information can be interpreted in the context of national environmental policy. The preparation of the example report helped to develop an analytical framework for environmental monitoring data and to identify analytical and statistical tools needed to conduct regional environmental assessments. The framework and tools are discussed in separate sections of the report that describe how the example report was prepared and the lessons learned by EMAP scientists in preparing it.