United States
                    Environmental Protection
                    Agency
Office of Research and
Development
Washington DC 20460
EPA/620/R-OO/OOSc
  November, 1999
                    Coastal  Communications
                          MANAGING COASTAL  DATA
Introduction
To answer broad-scale questions on environmental conditions, the Environmental Monitoring and
Assessment Program (EMAP) and its partners have collected estuarine and coastal data from
hundreds of stations along the coasts of the continental United States. Types of data include water
column parameters, sediment chemistry and toxicity, benthic communities, demersal fish, and tissue
contaminants.

Data Management
EMAP manages these data with SAS, Arc/Info, and Oracle. The four components of the EMAP Web
site (www.epa.gov/emap) shown below lead users to the data and
resulting information.                                             EMAP Home Page
Directory
Data Sets
Metadata
Bibliography
Searchable listing of EMAP data sets
ASCII data sets; Arc/Info files
Information about the data sets
EMAP publications
EMAP collaborates with other federal and state data systems (e.g., STORET, EIMS) so that its
data can be integrated with those from other monitoring programs. Information management is
coordinated by the Atlantic Ecology Division (Narragansett, RI) of the National Health and
Environmental Effects Research Laboratory.

EMAP National Coastal Database
In 2000, EMAP will add to its Web site an Oracle database that includes historical EMAP estuarine
and coastal data and will include new data from the entire U.S. coast collected by the Coastal 2000
program. Users will be able to select and download exactly the data they want, or select and plot
station data on a map.
Further Information
 Contact Stephen Hale (email hale.Stephen@epa.gOV or tel. 401-782-3048). Visit the EMAP
 Web site at www.epa.gov/emap.

-------