Our purpose for starting a western study is to advance the science of ecosystem health monitoring and to demonstrate the application of core tools from EMAP in monitoring and assessment across the West. We propose to accomplish this by proving EMAP designs can answer the urgent and practical assessment questions facing the western EPA Regional Offices while framing these unique studies in a methodology that can be extended to the entire nation. No nationally consistent methodology is in place to arrive at such estimates. The EMAP western pilot could demonstrate how to arrive at the status and trends in condition of surface waters, including biological measures, across multi-state regions in the three western regions.
Regional managers can then establish funding priorities based on comparable data.
The landscape component of EMAP provides information that has multiple management implications for EPA . The landscape monitoring and assessment offers complete coverage of the watersheds within the west and the indicators employed provide significant information on the vulnerability of the western aquatic systems to nonpoint source and habitat disturbances. Both the estuarine and inland aquatic monitoring provide information that feeds several activities in the west. Additionally, improved monitoring of these systems will feed the TMDL process by defining the magnitude of systems needing TMDLs, an estimate of how many of these will be resolved by the historic chemical loading model for TMDLs and how many will require new approaches toward setting TMDLs. Below are specific perspectives that must be imbedded in the western demonstration studies.