NARS—In Case You Ever Wondered How We Got Here

EPA’s National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS) provide information on the status and extent of biological and stressor condition in lakes and reservoirs, streams and rivers, coastal waters, and wetlands of the US. The tools (e.g., survey designs, methods, indicators) needed to implement NARS, and the resulting data and assessments produced from NARS are intended to help EPA and partners better meet the reporting requirements of the Clean Water Act. The NARS assessments are the pinnacle of a series of large-scale aquatic surveys conducted or coordinated by EPA and the methods used are built on the lessons learned from over 30 years of probabilistic monitoring of the nation’s aquatic resources . I will attempt to trace the evolution of the research efforts to support the implementation of NARS, beginning in the mid-1980s with the National Surface Water Surveys (NSWS), to the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP), to the NARS assessments. I hope this perspective will give potential users of NARS data a better understanding and appreciation of the hows and whys of “NARS monitoring.” I also hope that those who have been participants in NARS activities will appreciate the magnitude and importance of their collective efforts to the current and future success of the program.

Impact/Purpose

EPA Office of Water, with ORD assistance, has been implementing the National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS) since 2007. The assessments produced by NARS provides information on the status and extent of ecological condition in lakes and reservoirs, streams and rivers, coastal waters and the Great Lakes, and wetlands. The successful implementation of NARS is in large part due to research efforts related to large-scale aquatic monitoring that began in the 1980s to answer a seemingly simple question about the number of acidic lakes in the US and continued through the duration of the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment program (EMAP). This historical perspective of the “evolution” of NARS will give potential users of NARS data a better understanding and appreciation of the hows and whys of “NARS monitoring.” Those individuals and organizations who have been participants in NARS activities will appreciate the magnitude and importance of their collective efforts to the current and future success of the program.

Citation

Peck, Dave. NARS—In Case You Ever Wondered How We Got Here. 2019 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Northwest Chapter, Society for Freshwater Science, Newport, OR, November 06 - 08, 2019.