This National Coastal Condition Assessment 2010 (NCCA 2010) is the fifth in a series of reports assessing the condition of the coastal waters of the United States, including a vast array of beautiful and productive estuarine, Great Lakes, and coastal embayment waters. It is part of the National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS), a series of statistically based surveys designed to provide the public and decision makers with nationally consistent and representative information on the condition of all the nation’s waters. The NCCA 2010 answers questions such as: What is the condition of the nation’s coastal waters, and is that condition getting better or worse? What is the extent of the stressors affecting them?
This report is based on an analysis of indicators of ecological condition and key stressors in the coastal waters of the Northeast, Southeast, Gulf of Mexico, West, and Great Lakes regions of the conterminous United States. These waters are enormously varied and valuable, including remarkable resources as diverse as Narragansett Bay; the Chesapeake Bay; the subtropical waters of Biscayne Bay and Tampa Bay; San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound; and the nearshore waters of the Great Lakes—the largest expanse of fresh surface water on earth. In the summer of 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state, tribal, and federal partners sampled 1,104 sites in these waters, representing 35,400 square miles of U.S. coastal waters. They used the same methods at all sites to ensure that results would be nationally comparable. This report examines four indices as indicators of U.S. coastal condition: a benthic index, a water quality index, a sediment quality index, and an ecological fish tissue contaminant index. Figure ES-1 summarizes these findings.
