Chapter 1 ^^'^ 



THE NATIONAL ESTUARINE INVENTORY 



"In conducting the , . . study, the Secretary ^hall assemble, 

 coordinate, and organize all existinn pertinent information on the 

 Nation's estuaries and estuarine zones ..." 



Clean Water Restoration Act of 1966 



Section 5(g) (2) 



The National Estuarine Inventory is the primary repositorv of the 

 guantitative documentation used in the National Estuarine Pollution 

 Study to describe the Nation's estuarine system, its uses and -prob- 

 lems. While the directive calling for this Study did not explicitly 

 reguire an inventory, the breadth of information required implicitly 

 demanded inventory techniques, including automation. 



The Inventory differs from a basic data storage-and-retrieval system 

 in three respects: First, the intent is to supply information for 

 institutional and technical management rather than for scientific 

 analyses, thus introducing a very wide variety of information rind 

 also preventing duplication of existing federally- financed data sys- 

 tems. Second, to increase its value to the estuarine manager, much 

 material has been entered as statistical summaries rather than in 

 raw data form; and, third, information wiiich r^oes not readily lend 

 itself to automation techniques has been "assembled, coordinated, and 

 organized" by other methods. 



