a review and prospectus of new directions in environmental monitoring related to the Chesapeake Bay which I believe will increase the importance of monitoring in environmental assessment. These three new directions are (1) integrating monitoring, (2) applying new technologies; and (3) expanding information networks.
2. INTEGRATING MONITORING
After twelve years of an organized monitoring program for water quality and biota in the Bay and its tidal tributaries, efforts are underway to advance the effectiveness of environmental monitoring through greater integration of this monitoring with monitoring in other environmental media and between research and modeling. Because it has become increasingly clear that the Bay ecosystem is greatly affected by what takes place on the landscape of its catchment basin and what flows into the Bay from this watershed, the need for convergence in monitoring results from these different media is obvious. Moreover, the central role in management played by the linked water quality-watershed model provides both a framework for integration of these different monitoring results and a set of predictions which can be tested against actual field monitoring. Finally, because advances in understanding from research have been important in goal setting and model development, the emerging understanding should also be applied to the interpretation of monitoring results.
Efforts to improve the integration of monitoring are going on at two levels. With in the Chesapeake Bay Program, while guidance was previously limited to Bay water quality and biological monitoring, a holistic strategy is now being developed for monitoring of all media. On the national level, a new framework for integrating monitoring and research is currently being developed by the federal agencies under the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (National Science and Technology Council 1996). The Mid-Atlantic region, including the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed, has been selected for the pilot implementation of this integrated framework. This provides a fortunate opportunity for co-evolution of Chesapeake Bay Program monitoring and the national strategy.
The basic dimensions of this integration are as follows:
a. Across environmental media
How can we best interrelate monitoring data on land use and cover, air quality and atmospheric deposition, stream and river water quality, wetlands, and estuarine habitats and water quality? The linked management models provide some framework for this integration, but other factors must also be considered in improving coordination among these diverse monitoring programs and the sharing and application of data.
b. Between water quality and living resources Although water quality objectives have been set, the driving public policy goal is the restoration of the living resources of the Chesapeake Bay. To what degree will these resources recover if water quality and habitats are improved? How does environmental quality interact with resource utilization to affect stocks of fishery resources? For some living resources, correlation approaches have shown some success. For example, water quality criteria have been developed for the maintenance of submersed aquatic vegetation (which disappeared over large parts of the Bay during the 1970s) (Dennison, et al. 1993). For other living resources the relationship may be more complex. Physico-chemical and biological results from monitoring are being used in trophodynamic models which predict year-class success. In addition, ecosystem models which couple biological output with water quality are being developed as an extension of management modeling.
c. Among agencies
Greater cooperation is being sought among the various federal, state and local agencies and other organizations which conduct environmental monitoring. This is often difficult because these programs were put into place to respond to different mandates and have different objectives, funding sources, and technical infrastructures. Such integration requires finding common ground among monitor-
