Review of EPA's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program Overall Evaluation (1995) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-10
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Following the Science Advisory Board's advice, EPA established the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) "to monitor ecological status and trends, as well as to develop innovative methods to anticipate emerging environmental problems before they reach crisis proportions".
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As described by EPA, EMAP is unified by its approach to landscape characterization, the application of a coherent strategy for the choice and the development of indicators, and the use of a probability-based sampling approach that uses a hexagonal grid for identifying sampling sites. There are eight resource groups identified by the program: agroecosystems, arid (now rangeland} ecosystems, forests, the Great Lakes, estuaries, inland surface waters, wetlands (recently subsumed under surface waters and the Great Lakesl, and landscape ecology.
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· The EMAP sampling program may operate at too coarse a scale in space and time to detect meaningful changes in the condition of ecological resources. · EMAP's success will be diminished if it does not develop reliable, scientifically defensible indicators for measuring change.
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describes EMAP's recent responses to earlier NRC reports and provides additional updates about the program. Many of the changes described appear to be in line with the earlier committee recommendations.
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As in the above point, if EMAP does not adopt these changes, it should become closely coordinated with a program that monitors in this way. · EMAP should undertake power analyses regarding the effectiveness of the sampling design for each resource group.*
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· EMAP should provide program-wide guidance for numerous evaluation issues if the indicator-selection strategy is going to yield the nationally applicable set of indicators EMAP envisions. The committee recommends as a high priority the explicit and early evaluation of the statistical properties of all potential indicators.
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The new Integration and Assessment Program is a positive step in this direction, but we do not have a good description of the activities of this program. · EMAP should develop coordinated sampling between terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric resources.' Resources 'One committee memberhas been deeply concerned about the apparent lack of communication between senior administrators and possibly senior scientists, In the Air and Deposition Section of EMAP and those in major federa/, state, and internationa/ agencies /e g., Canada and Mexico} who are a/so heavily involved in eco/ogica/risk assessments anc/ environments/ protection.
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The data sets would be considerably stronger because the spatial covariance of the data sets could be used to test hypotheses related to cause and effect relationships. Possible examples include indicators reflecting net primary productivity, biological diversity, and aesthetic value.
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· The committee recommends that EPA senior administrators facilitate close working relationships between EMAP and appropriate offices and divisions of EPA, including other research programs in the Office of Research and Development. In particular, EMAP should continue in its efforts to develop close working relationships with the EPA Office of Water to capture the benefits of EPA's past experience in collecting data on surface waters.
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Information Management · While top-clown planning for EMAP's information system is important, EMAP should base such planning on the viewpoint that the information system is a scientific database system, rather than an information system focused on the needs of management if the Information Management System is to function and facilitate integration among research groups as envisioned by EMAP. In particular, the planning should focus on the design of an environment that is sensitive to user requirements and that provides excellent hardware, software, and support personnel.
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