USING INFORMATION ON SPATIAL VARIABILITY OF SMALL ESTUARIES IN DESIGNING LARGE-SCALE ESTUARINE MONITORING PROGRAMS

摘要

In the early 1990s, EPA's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program(EMAP) documented the ecological condition of the overall population of small estuaries along the mid-At- lantic coast of the United States. However, the Program did not provide detailed information on the condition of individual estuaries less than 260 km~2 in surface area, a group of estuaries of concern to environmental managers. To address the needs of environmental managers, when EMAP returned to the region in summer 1997, it included a study a of the spatial variability of ecological indicators within individual small estuaries.