Environmental Monitoring & Assessment Program

Kevin Summers

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Gulf Breeze, Florida

For approximately 17 years, the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program has been collecting ecological condition information in a variety of ecosystem types, This has involved conducting research to determine the best designs, indicators, approaches and logistics for conducting national monitoring surveys and subsequent assessments in these research types. The robust nature of the sampling designs used in these programs results in data that can be used for a variety of purposes that go beyond their original intent. We will explore a number of novel non-monitoring uses of these data to date and discuss other possible uses. This session will include uses of EMAP data, both alone and in combination with other data to address issues of habitat suitability and restoration, contaminant interactions, and nutrient modeling and forecasting. Other non-monitoring uses have been to assess the accuracy of species distributions, project the impact of changing temperature of species distributions, examine the utility and protectiveness of proposed criteria values, and assessing the likelihood that management and policy actions have the desired effect on the environment.