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system in which the results of monitoring are routinely used to guide and focus future actions, including 

 regulating activities, influencing decisions, and refocusing efforts. 



The Committee recommended that the effects of significant marine environmental management policies and 

 actions should be monitored to evaluate the actions and to improve the ability to predict the consequences of 

 management decisions. Monitoring programs should be sufficiently flexible for results to be used to redesign 

 and eliminate components that have not produced or are not likely to produce useful information. Agencies 

 charged with environmental management responsibilities should provide for periodic systematic reviews of the 

 results of their monitoring programs. 



COMPREHENSIVE MONITORING OF REGIONAL AND 

 NATIONAL TRENDS IS NEEDED 



The Committee concluded that the present array of compliance monitoring programs, regional monitoring 

 programs, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Status and Trends 

 Program is inadequate to establish patterns and trends in the quality of the nation's coastal environments or to 

 determine the effectiveness of environmental policies and regulations. Most resources spent on marine 

 environmental monitoring are for monitoring compliance with specific permit conditions. Compliance monitoring 

 meets limited, narrow objectives that do not necessarily address broader public concerns about whether the 

 marine environment is being degraded or about what such degradation means. Regional status and trends 

 monitoring is needed to better address public concerns, assess the threat of the cumulative impacts, and provide 

 a context for interpretation and evaluation of site-specific compliance monitoring. It may be possible to 

 reallocate some of the resources of compliance monitoring programs so that they contribute to regional status 

 and trends information without additional effort or cost. 



The Committee recommended that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and NOAA should cooperate 

 to develop a more effective national program to monitor environmental status and trends in the coastal ocean 

 and estuaries, which combines regional programs with a sparser national network. The nucleus for this network 

 should be developed through NOAA's NS&T Program and EPA's National Estuary Program and proposed 

 Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP). New legal authority or regulatory policies should 

 be instituted to allow some resources devoted to compliance monitoring to be reallocated to a regional status 

 and trends monitoring program. Other federal, state, and interstate regional monitoring programs (such as those 

 being planned for the Gulf of Mexico by the Minerals Management Service) should be strongly encouraged to 

 participate in regional efforts by adopting compatible protocols. Those responsible for managing estuaries 

 included under the National Estuary Program should be required to develop and implement a status and trends 

 monitoring program. The coordination of marine pollution research and monitoring programs among the 

 federal agencies should be critically evaluated and necessary administrative and statutory changes implemented 

 to improve definition of responsibilities, interagency coordination, and overall effectiveness. Finally, NOAA 

 should, in cooperation with EPA, prepare a report to Congress every three years which synthesizes the results 

 of the national monitoring program, documents the status and trends of the coastal ocean, and evaluates 

 management actions. 



IMPROVED PROGRAM DESIGN AND INFORMATION PRODUCTS 

 WILL MAKE MONITORING RESULTS MORE USEFUL 



The Committee concluded that many monitoring programs are ineffective because they devote too little attention 

 to the formulation of clear goals and objectives, technical program design, and the translation of data through 

 analysis and synthesis into information that is relevant and accessible. Effective marine environmental monitoring 

 programs must have the following features: clearly defined goals and objectives; a technical design based on an 

 understanding of system linkages and processes, directed at testable questions and hypotheses, and subjected to 

 peer review; methods that employ statistically valid observations and predictive models; and the means to 

 translate data into information products tailored to the needs of their users. 



The Committee recommended that monitoring programs should incorporate a rigorous design methodology. 

 Compliance monitoring programs for major activities should be carefully evaluated by agencies requiring the 

 monitoring to ensure that they meet design criteria. EPA, in cooperation with NOAA, should prepare guidance 



