Protocol for Monitoring Estuarine Water and Sediment Quality in Selected Southeast Coast Network Parks.

摘要

The National Park Service (NPS) Inventory & Monitoring Program has initiated estuarine and near-shore water quality and sediment monitoring in the vicinity of Cape Hatteras National Seashore (CAHA), Cape Lookout National Seashore (CALO), Canaveral National Seashore (CANA), Cumberland Island National Seashore (CUIS), Fort Matanzas National Monument (FOMA), Fort Pulaski National Monument (FOPU), and Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve (TIMU). This monitoring was initiated programmatically by the Natural Resource Challenge and implemented in 2006 to focus specifically on providing data needed to assess the quality of near-park estuarine waters and benthic sediments. This protocol relies on data collection methods and standard operation procedures (SOPs) currently in use by U.S. Environmental Protection Administration (USEPA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitoring programs with the intent of leveraging the usefulness of NPS data by ensuring its comparability with existing, contemporary, and future data sets collected under these and other state monitoring programs.