United States
                      Environmental Protection
                      Agency
                                                 Office of Research and
                                                 Development
                                                 Washington DC 20460
EPA/620/R-01/001K
  December, 2001
                      Coastal  Communications
                         National  Coastal  Assessment:
                                      Mississippi
                              ORD/MDEQ/Rcgion 4/OW
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                                                       Mississippi
                                                          NCA2001
Background
The U.S. EPA's National Coastal
Assessment (NCA), is a multi-year
partnership among EPA's Office of
Research and Development (ORD),
EPA's Office of Water (OW), EPA's
Regional Offices, all coastal states,
and selected territories. As part of
this effort, ORD  has developed a
coastal monitoring program with EPA
Region 4, and the Mississippi
Department of Environmental Quality
(AADEQ). This program integrates
elements of existing Mississippi
estuarine and coastal monitoring and
assessment efforts. This joint effort
will determine the condition of
estuarine waters  in Mississippi and
permit comparison to other U.S. coastal areas. The effort is being coordinated by the ORD National Health
and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory's Gulf Ecology Division in Gulf Breeze, Florida.

National Coastal Assessment Strategy
The National Coastal Assessment is a strategic partnership between EPA and the coastal states and other
federal agencies.  Each state uses a compatible probabilistic design and a common set of environmental
indicators (see Table below) to survey its coastal resources and assess their condition. These estimates can
then be aggregated to assess conditions at the EPA regional, biogeographical, and national  levels.  All data will
be made available for public access  on the Internet. The map shows the coastal areas included in the 2001
survey and  the number of sampling sites in estuarine waters of Mississippi.
                                                            Scale
                                                           1:450,000
                                                                       Estuary Class
                                                                       |  |   IGQ s->«
Water Quality
dissolved oxygen
Salinity, •temperature, depth
pH
Nutrients
Chlorophyll
Sediment Quality
Grain size
Total organic carbon
Sediment chemistry
Benthic community structure
Sediment toxicity
Biota
Benthic community structure
Fish community structure
Fish external pathology
Fish tissue chemical analyses

Further Information
For further information, please contact Jeff Thomas at the MDEQ at (601) 961-5157 or
jeff_thomas@deq.state.ms.us ; or Bill Walker at the ORD National Health and Environmental Effects
Laboratory's (Sulf Ecology Division at (850) 934-9247 or walker.bill@epa.gov. Visit the coastal
communications web site at http://www.epa.gov/ged/crc.htm.

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