527 



Section 4. Present Status of the Inventory 



Presently, the inventory consists of some 150 magnetic tapes of data 

 containing more than 200 million individual pieces of information; 

 several voluminous compilations of information not amenable to auto- 

 mation; hundreds of charts, maps, papers, books, and files; the com- 

 plete coastline of the conterminous United States on microfilm; sev- 

 eral thousand index cards containing a detailed bibliography; and 

 considerable documentation ranging from step-by-step instructions 

 for coding each column of each data card to multivolume reports on 

 sedimentation and ecology. It is unfortunate that the above represents 

 complete and detailed information on no single estuary or estuarine 

 zone in the United States. In a few cases only one or two crucial sec- 

 tions may be missing, but for the remainder there are large knowledge 

 gaps which will be discussed in chapter 2 of this part. Overall, prob- 

 ably only about one-third to one-half of the existing pertinent infor- 

 mation is stored in the inventory data bank. 



In compiling the mass of data inentioned above, pure research was 

 found to be rare. The availability of data depends on there having 

 been a sound economic reason for its collection. Among Federal or 

 State agencies, for example, data are gathered as a matter of agency 

 'mission and are usually readily available ; that is, the Bureau of Census 

 and the Office of Business Economics function as data gatherers and 

 can provide nationwide information as a matter of course. 



Elsewhere, data may be collected for a single special purpose, such as 

 a Corps of Engineers project study or an FWPCA technical assistance 

 study. These usually result in a single report which may or may not 

 include all the data gathered during the study, and which almost cer- 

 tainly would not be included in a nationwide compilation. In the last 

 instance, each datum must be pulled from widely separated regional or 

 district office files and arranged in a uniform manner to be useful on 

 a broad scale. 



A third large category of available data is that which is routinely 

 gathered but is not routinely published. Included here are water pollu- 

 tion surveillance data, daily river flows, dredging statistics, and many, 

 many others. 



The routinely published information was, of course, the easiest to 

 obtain. The decentralized report files were somewhat more difficult to 

 acquire. Less significant because of the relatively small volumes of 

 information involved, but most difficult to acquire, were the data from 

 special surveys. In all cases, if required data are not in published re- 

 ports, it is extremely difficult to locate and acquire them. 



Of the published pertinent information, virtually all has either been 

 included directly in the inventory or has been summarized to be in- 

 cluded in some form. 



Several hundred thousand items from sources other than those men- 

 tioned above have also been entered. 



As the process of collecting information developed, revisions in the 

 descriptor list became necessary. In certain cases descriptors listed 

 were not available on a basis broad enough to be useful, and an alter- 

 nate descriptor which would provide the same type of information 



