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California Monitoring and Assessment Program (CMAP) for Perennial Streams

Melenee Emanuel and Emilie Reyes

State Water Resource Control Board, Sacramento, California

The California Monitoring and Assessment Program (CMAP) for wadeable perennial streams was initiated in 2004. This program builds on USEPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP). A probabilistic monitoring design incorporating land use classes will allow for assessments of status and trends in aquatic life beneficial use protection in streams. The program’s goals are to:

  1. provide a framework for producing valid condition assessments for perennial streams in California,
  2. develop tools to facilitate these assessments, and
  3. evaluate associations between stream condition and nonpoint source land use categories.

Historic EMAP data were analyzed to produce assessments of the condition of streams statewide and in special study areas in northern and southern coastal California. Several assessments will also be completed focusing on providing condition assessments statewide and for the broad land use categories of urban, agriculture, and forested.

CMAP is winding down, and 2007 will be the last year of collecting samples. An expanded statewide perennial streams survey will be initiated in 2008. This effort, aimed at developing a coordinated and comprehensive statewide monitoring design, would integrate bioassessment efforts currently funded through the State’s Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program and the Nonpoint Source Program with existing local and regional bioassessment efforts. A key feature of the design would be to identify relationships between land-use stressors and response indicators.

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