United States
                      Environmental Protection
                      Agency
Office of Research and
Development
Washington DC 20460
EPA620/R-02/001a
      March, 2002
                      Coastal  Communications
                       NATIONAL COASTAL ASSESSMENT:
                                         ALASKA
                             ORD/RE6ION 10/0 W/ADEC
                                    2OOOJ
Background
The US EPA's National Coastal Assessment (NCA) is a five-year effort led by EPA's Office of Research and
Development (ORD) and EPA's Office of Water (OW), to evaluate the assessment methods it has developed to
advance the science of ecosystem condition monitoring. This program will survey the condition of the Nation's
coastal resources (estuaries) by creating an integrated and comprehensive coastal monitoring program among
the coastal states to assess coastal ecological condition. The NCA is accomplished through strategic
partnerships with all 24 U.S. coastal states. Using a compatible probabilistic design and a common set of
survey indicators, each state conducts their survey and assesses the condition of their coastal resources
independently. Because of the compatible design, these estimates can be aggregated to assess conditions at
the EPA Regional, biogeographical, and National levels.

National Coastal Assessment Strategy
The Environmental Protection Agency has developed a
Cooperative Agreement with the Alaska Department of
Environmental Conservation (ADEC) to work
collaboratively in the Western States' Coastal EMAP
component of the NCA.

Since Alaska has more shoreline than all other coastal
states combined, the state has been separated into
five coastal  regions. ADEC will conduct a pilot study
on the south central Alaska estuarine region to assess
the physical, biological, and chemical condition of
coastal resources using a standardized suite of
environmental indicators during the summer of 2002.
This project will  involve partnerships with National Marine Fisheries Service (Seattle, WA), U.S. EPA
(Corvallis and Newport, OR), Alaska Department of Fish & Same, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Washington
Department of Ecology, Cook Inlet Keeper, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council and other interested
parties to establish a monitoring baseline in Alaska. Field sampling is expected to start in early July and run
through late August/early September depending upon weather.

The base sampling effort (figure) will be supplemented by placement of additional sites within Prince William
Sound and Cook Inlet to allow the overall condition of these water bodies to be statistically assessed.
Currently the sampling allocation is for 31 sites in  Prince William Sound, 30 sites in Cook Inlet, and 14 sites
along the remainder of southern central coast of the Alaska Peninsula.

Further Information
For further information, please contact Gerry Guay at the ADEC at (907) 269-3070 or
gerry_guay@envirocon.state.ak.us; or Walt Nelson at the ORD National Health and Environmental Effects
Research Laboratory's Western Ecology  Division at Newport, Oregon at (541)8674041 or
nelson.walt@epa.gov.  Visit the Coastal Communications web site at http://www.epa.gov/ged/crc.htm.
              EMAP  - 2002
    Western Coastal Pilot - Alaska

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