The System-wide Monitoring Program measures changes in estuarine water quality, habitat and land use to ensure that the nation's coastal areas are healthy. It provides information on national environmental trends, while allowing flexibility for coastal managers to gain a better understanding of regional or local issues. The measurements are taken at a minimum of two sites in each reserve at continuous 30 minute intervals.
Weather can have a major impact on estuarine habitats.
Storms increase polluted runoff into waterbodies and can influence an estuary's temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity and pH. As part of SWMP, every reserve has a weather monitoring station. The program also will increase our understanding of how estuaries function and change naturally over time. Only by doing this will we be able to predict how these systems respond to changes in climate and human-induced perturbations. As funds become available the reserve system plans to expand SWMP to monitor nutrient, eutrophication, and changes in habitat land use. At the Great Bay Reserve in New Hampshire, SWMP data were extremely useful in the analysis of environmental conditions associated with the first recorded episode of the oyster disease MSX in the Great Bay estuary.