Water Quality Vital Signs Monitoring Protocol for the Pacific Island Network: Volume 1. Report Narrative: Version 1.0

Jones, Tahzay; Deverse, Kimber; Dicus, Gordon; McKay, Danielle; Farahi, Anne; Kozar, Kelly; Brown, Eric

Water resources in the Pacific Island Network (PACN) support rich and diverse ecosystems and aquatic communities that include corals reefs, anchialine pools communities (endemic to Hawaii), and freshwater stream communities. These water resources span a range of conditions from pristine to highly impaired water bodies. Both point and non-point sources impact the waters of many of our network parks at various locations (DeVerse and DiDonato 2006) to varying degrees. Aquatic resource protection is required by all the governments of the PACN, and water quality is widely used as an indicator of aquatic resource condition by regulators and ecologists. The United States Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1977 requires States and Territories to promulgate legally enforceable water quality standards (WQS) and lists of waters not currently meeting or expected to meet the standards. This protocol should provide the parks with some of the summary information necessary to determine their compliance with the applicable WQS in addition to providing correlative environmental data to ecologists. The water quality vital sign is closely linked with the benthic marine community, marine fish, groundwater, and freshwater animal communities vital signs, and monitoring efforts will be conducted in parallel to maximize data value. The water quality protocol will be implemented in all PACN parks. This protocol provides the methodology for addressing two monitoring questions: 1) What are the ranges and variances of the network water quality parameters within selected water bodies? 2) What are the temporal and spatial trends of the network core water quality parameters for individual water bodies or water resource types in each park? The first question has the objective to determine the range and spatial variance on an annual basis of temperature, pH, conductivity/salinity, dissolved oxygen (DO), turbidity, total dissolved nitrogen (TDN), total dissolved phosphorous (TDP), Nitrate (NO3), and chlorophyll in coastal marine waters, streams, wetlands, and a saline lake in the 11 PACN parks. The second question has the objective of determining the temporal (events, diurnal, seasonal, annual, decadal) and spatial trends, for the temperature, pH, conductivity/salinity, and dissolved oxygen in coastal marine waters, streams, and wetlands in the 11 PACN parks. This protocol employs a split panel design with eight fixed and random sites sampled quarterly along with two extended deployment sondes collecting physical parameters seasonally (wet and dry seasons) in each monitored park water resource. This design provides for the ability to provide both status and trend information. This design also statistically increases the power to detect change over time, resulting from the ability to conduct parameter corrections based on repeat analysis. In addition, the utilization of extended deployment sondes maximizes the ability to use data to conduct trend analyses. This sampling regime represents the maximum sustainable effort given current fiscal realities for the I&M water quality monitoring program only. Increased sampling is possible with more assistance from parks, in addition to partnering with other federal, state, territorial, or local water quality monitoring programs, including interested and reliable non-governmental and private organizations. The complete Water Quality Vital signs Monitoring Protocol consists of this narrative and additional volumes containing appendixes and standard operating procedures. Any changes in this narrative will be logged in the revision history log found in Appendix B. This protocol shall not be altered for the sole purpose of becoming compatible with a short-term (20 years or less) state or regional water quality monitoring program.

Water Quality Vital Signs Monitoring Protocol for the Pacific Island Network: Volume 1. Report Narrative: Version 1.0

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