Aleutians Islands Coastal EMAP Survey 2006-2007
| EXAMPLE: to characterize 3 million lakes, it would take every man, woman, and child in Alaska to visit five or six different lakes each. That impossible effort would just take care of the lakes, not streams, rivers, wetlands or marine waters. |
Under the Clean Water Act (CWA) Sections 303(d) and 305(b) Alaska has the responsibility to report and identify causes and sources of water quality impairment by “characterizing all the waters in Alaska ”.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) provides a practical, cost effective method to characterize Alaska ’s coastal and surface waters. The EPA has been the funding source for EMAP, but partnerships are necessary to carry out the projects.
The Alaska EMAP Program (AK EMAP) has sampled both coastal and fresh waters since 2002. Coastal sampling projects have been completed in Southcentral Alaska (2002), and in Southeast Alaska (2004). A freshwater sampling project has been completed in the Tanana River basin in 2004. As reports from these projects are made available, they will be posted on this site.
Principal Operational Objectives for
ADEC Division of Water EMAP
1) Estimate current status, trends and changes in
selected indicators of Alaska ’s aquatic ecological
resources on a regional and statewide basis with
know statistical confidence;
2) Estimate geographic coverage and extent of
Alaska ’s aquatic ecological resources within a
know statistical confidence interval;
3) Seek to establish associations between selected
indicators of natural and anthropogenic stresses and
indications of the condition of aquatic ecological resources;
4) Provide for statistical summaries and periodic
assessments of Alaska ’s aquatic ecological resources.
(Adapted from EPA, 1997)
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The EMAP implementation strategy is DEC’s plan to sample and report monitoring data for large regions of Alaska in the near future.
EMAP incorporates EPA’s probabilistic stratified random sampling design. The design is coupled with a common set of survey indicators to provide for a statistically unbiased, objective assessment of the overall environmental condition of Alaskan waters(EPA, 2001).
EMAP’s survey design is an important tool to help resource managers, elected officials and the public see the “big picture” for large regions, with known statistical confidence, and to report on the status of Alaska ’s ecological resources. No similar probabilistic sampling survey studies are underway within Alaska to provide regional, ecological information on such a large scale.
EMAP is a national program, enabling Alaska DEC to compare AK EMAP results with other states’ projects. The national EMAP webpage has general information about this nationwide effort. Other states in EPA Region 10 have done several EMAP projects under the Western EMAP (WEMAP) for several years. EPA Region 10 has an AK EMAP page, and sampling photos from the 2002 AK EMAP sampling.
National assessments of AK EMAP results are published periodically in the National Coastal Conditions Report.
For more information, contact:
Doug Dasher
doug.dasher@alaska.gov
907-451-2172
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