PREP Reports & Publications

Abstract

The 2006 State of the Estuaries Report includes twelve indicators intended to report on the health and environmental quality of New Hampshire’s estuaries.The New Hampshire Estuaries Project (NHEP) developed and now implements a Monitoring Plan to track environmental indicators, inform management decisions, and report on environmental progress and status. The Monitoring Plan describes the methods and data for 34 indicators used to determine if the environmental goals and objectives of the Management Plan are being met. For each indicator, the Monitoring Plan defines the monitoring objective, management goal, data quality objectives, data analysis and statistical methods, and data sources. Just as implementation of the Management Plan for New Hampshire’s estuaries involves the collaboration of many organizations and agencies, the NHEP Monitoring Plan relies on data compiled from organizations that are leaders in the management and protection of the state’s estuaries and coastal watershed resources. Every three years, the NHEP prepares a State of the Estuaries report that includes information on the status and trends of a indicators from the coastal watershed and estuaries. The report provides the NHEP, natural resource managers, local officials, conservation organizations, and the public with information on the effects of management decisions and actions. Prior to developing each State of the Estuaries report, the NHEP publishes four technical data reports (“indicator reports”) that illustrate the status and trends of the complete collection of indicators tracked by the NHEP. Each report focuses on a different suite of indicators: Water Quality, Shellfish, Critical Habitats and Species, and Land Use and Development. These reports are available from the NHEP website, www.nhep.unh.edu. The 2006 State of the Estuaries Report communicates the status of 12 out of the 34 environmental indicators tracked by the NHEP. For each of these key indicators it provides the reader with the associated NHEP management goal and an explanation of supporting data. For some of the 12 indicators, additional information from supporting or related indicators is presented to further explain trends or to provide context for the primary indicators. The interpretations of the indicators in this report were peer reviewed by the 15 member NHEP Technical Advisory Committee and other experts in relevant fields, including university professors, researchers, and state and federal environmental managers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. Therefore, the conclusions of this report represent the current scientific consensus regarding conditions in New Hampshire’s estuaries.

Department

Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership

Publication Date

2006

Publisher

New Hampshire Estuaries Project

Document Type

Report

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