543 



Table VI.1.8 — Inventory Information in Other Parts of this Report 



Taile number and table subject: 

 IV.1.1— River Flow. 

 IV.1.2— Sediments. 

 IV.1.3— Climate. 

 rv.1.4— Tidal Characteristics. 



IV.1.5 — Dominating Environmental Characteristics. 

 IV.l 6 — ^Sizeand Shape Comparisons. 

 IV.l. 7— Morphological Classdfications. 

 IV.1.8 — Natural Ocean and River Water Quality. 

 IV.3.1 — Population and Agriculture. 

 IV.3.2 — Industrialization. 

 IV.3.3 — Land Ownership. 

 IV.3.5 — Commercial Fisheries. 

 IV.2.4 — ^Recreation Shoreline. 

 IV.2.5 — Commercial Shipping. 

 IV.2.7 — Cooling Water Withdrawals. 

 IV.2. 8— Coastal Mining. 

 IV.2.9 — Navigation Dredging. 

 IV.2.10— Marsh Habitat Lost by FUling. 

 IV.2.11 — ^Flow Regulation Structures. 

 IV.5.4 — Artificial Modifying Structures. 

 IV.5.7— iTotal Industrial Wastes. 

 IV.5.8 — Major Industrial Wastes. 

 IV.5.11 — Sstuarine Systems with Degraded Water Quality. 



Section 7. The Future of the Inventory 



The Natiional Estuarine Inventory was initially intended only to sat- 

 isfy the needs of the National Estuarine Pollution Study. However, as 

 the project developed, it became apparent that the inventory, or its 

 lineal descendant, can be of far-reaching value in the estuarine man- 

 agement, research, and study. 



There are many agencies and groups involved both institutional and 

 tecihnical management planning, plan implementation, and research 

 in the coastal zone. They are concerned at all levels — national, re- 

 gional. State, county, and looal. The inventory automation system is 

 capalble of supplying all of these groups with data pertinent to their 

 own different needs with these two advantages: First, available in- 

 formation can be acquired from a single source, providing a baseline 

 of usable information with which the planner can begin work immed- 

 iately. Secondly, knowledge gaps are identifiable, making it possible 

 for the manager, the scientist, or the technician to concentrate study 

 capability in areas of true ignorance, directing their efforts to new or 

 complementary rather than duplicative, activities. 



There is nothing new or unusual about data storage and retrieval 

 systems. They differ only in the contents that they are written to con- 

 tain. There are many in the Federal Government, such as the detailed 

 file of oceanographic water quality data maintained by the National 

 Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) ; the hydrologic information 

 managed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS Hydrologic) ; the 

 files of water quality data which FWPCA (STORET) maintains and 

 many others. The majority of these systems are designed primarily 

 for the scientist and the technician involved in solving technical proib- 

 lems in the environment. The inventory, on the other hand, is written 

 to contain information of a more general nature and is intended to 



