Monitoring Ecological Condition in the Western United States

The monitoring of point sources by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the states, and the tribes has documented and helped reduce the levels of chemical stressors affecting our ecosystems. With the controls on point sources reducing chemical contamination, new environmental challenges associated with nonpoint sources have emerged. To adequately deal with these new problems, EPA's Office of Research and Development recognized the need to develop an overall under­ standing of the condition of our ecological resources, the trends in their condition, and the stressors affecting these systems on a broad scale. Toward this end, the En­ vironmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) was established by EPA and has been strategically developing the scientific tools and techniques to monitor and assess the status and trends of aquatic ecosystems. EMAP scientists have developed new indicators and probability-based de­ signs to fill data gaps in the development of regional-scale assessments of our aquatic resources, as required in the Clean Water Act. We have a scientifically de­ fensible approach that allows: 100 percent coverage of the aquatic resources within broad geographic areas and the formulation of reference 'conditions for es­ tablishing the health of these resources. The use of these indicators and designs were successfully demonstrated in the landscapes, streams, and estuaries of the mid-Atlantic states as part of the Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAlA).

Table of Contents:
B. Introduction.- EMAP Overview: Objectives, Approaches, and Achievements.- C. Regional Assessments.- An Overview of EPA’s Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) Program.- Status of Aquatic Bioassessment in U.S. EPA Region IX.- An Integrated Ecosystem Assessment of the Interior Columbia Basin.- A Landscape Ecology Assessment of the Tensas River Basin.- D. Approaches to Database Design, Monitoring & Modeling.- Designing Environmental Databases for Statistical Analyses.- EMAP Design and River Reach File (RF3) as a Sample Frame in the Central Valley, California.- Monitoring Air Quality in Mountains: Designing an Effective Network.- Global Grids from Recursive Diamond Subdivisions of the Surface of an Octahedron or Icosahedron.- An Automated Technique for Delineating and Characterizing Valley-Bottom Settings.- Combining Accuracy Assessment of Land-Cover Maps with Environmental Monitoring Programs.- Mapping Patterns of Human Use and Potential Resource Conflicts on Public Lands.- Monitoring Ecosystems in the Sierra Nevada: The Conceptual Model Foundation.- E. Landscape Considerations.- Assessing and Monitoring the Health of Western Rangeland Watersheds.- Monitoring Australian Rangeland Sites Using Landscape Function Indicators and Ground- and Remote-Based Techniques.- A Landscape Approach for Detecting and Evaluating Change in a Semi-Arid Environment.- Application of Ecological Classification and Predictive Vegetation Modeling to Broad-Level Assessments of Ecosystem Health.- Montane Meadows as Indicators of Environmental Change.- F. Water Quality and Land Use.- Assessing Landscape Condition Relative to Water Resources in the Western United States: A Strategic Approach.- Relations of Habitat-Specific Algal Assemblages to Land Use and Water Chemistry in the WillametteBasin, Oregon.- Responses of Physical, Chemical, and Biological Indicators of Water Quality to a Gradient of Agricultural Land Use in the Yakima River Basin, Washington.- G. Watersheds, Lakes and Rivers.- A Knowledge-Based Approach to the Assessment of Watershed Condition.- Modeling Runoff Response to Land Cover and Rainfall Spatial Variability in Semi-Arid Watersheds.- Monitoring Inter-Annual Variability Reveals Sources of Mercury Contamination in Clear Lake, California.- Macroinvertebrate Assemblages on Woody Debris and their Relations with Environmental Variables in the Lower Sacramento and San Joaquin River Drainages, California.- Instream-Flow Needs for Anadromous Salmonids and Lamprey on the Pacific Coast, with Special Reference to the Pacific Southwest.- Characterizing Small Subbasins: A Case Study from Coastal Oregon.- H. Marine Coastal Areas.- Development of the Coastal Intensive Site Network (CISNet).- Spatial Extent of Sediment Toxicity in U.S. Estuaries and Marine Bays.- An Overview of Contaminant-Related Issues Identified by Monitoring in San Francisco Bay.- Assessment of Benthic Infaunal Condition on the Mainland Shelf of Southern California.- A Regional Survey of the Microbiological Water Quality Along the Shoreline of the Southern California Bight.