Abstract |
Tampa Bay is the subject of research and monitoring programs conducted by several federal, state, regional, and local agencies. In order to provide information on existing monitoring programs, an investigation was conducted to identify a set of ongoing, recently suspended, and proposed monitoring programs for Tampa Bay and its watershed. A summary of each program investigated was classified as either a water quality, habitat, or living resource study and listed alphabetically by agency within each class. The information was reviewed and summarized with respect to the status, objective, approach, sample selection method, and level of sampling effort for each monitoring program. The status and objectives were characterized by the staff contacted and the status was reported as either an ongoing effort, a proposed future effort or a recently suspended effort. The approach of each program was reported as a summary of the sampling design, methods used, and parameters analyzed. Sample selection criteria were presented in terms of sample selection methods and geographic sample coverage. The sampling effort was presented in terms of temporal sample coverage, sampling event frequency, and number of samples taken per sampling event. |