Protocol for monitoring estuarine water and sediment quality in selected Southeast Coast Network parks: Protocol narrative—version 2.0

Starkey, Eric; Gregory, M.; Wright, Wendy; DeVivo, Joseph; DiDonato, Eva; Wright, Christina; Thompson, Emma

doi:10.36967/2299077

The National Park Service (NPS) Inventory & Monitoring Program has initiated estuarine and near-shore water-quality and sediment monitoring in the vicinity of Cape Hatteras National Seashore (CAHA), Cape Lookout National Seashore (CALO), Canaveral National Seashore (CANA), Cumberland Island National Seashore (CUIS), Fort Matanzas National Monument (FOMA), Fort Pulaski National Monument (FOPU), and Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve (TIMU). This monitoring was initiated programmatically by the Natural Resource Challenge and implemented in 2006 to focus specifically on providing data needed to assess the quality of near-park estuarine waters and benthic sediments. This protocol relies on data collection methods and standard operation procedures (SOPs) currently in use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitoring programs with the intent of leveraging the usefulness of NPS data by ensuring its comparability with existing, contemporary, and future data sets collected under these and other state monitoring programs. The Southeast Coast Network’s (SECN) monitoring effort is composed of collecting data from permanent, fixed-station continuous data loggers in combination with analysis of periodic discrete water samples and sediment samples. These data provide park resource managers information on the status of, and trends in, water and sediment quality within and near parks. Fixed-station water-quality monitoring is conducted at seven parks using continuously-recording data loggers (data sondes) that monitor select water-quality parameters at 15- and 30-minute intervals. In addition, at these same permanent locations, monthly hand-collected water samples are analyzed for nitrogen, phosphorus, and chlorophyll a concentrations. Methods for the SECN fixed-station water-quality and nutrient sampling are adapted from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-National Estuarine Reserve Research System (NERRS) Program. In addition to the permanent sampling sites, multi-day sampling events are conducted at 30 randomly selected sites in the vicinity of seven parks at five-year intervals for the purpose of assessing water and sediment quality conditions. Methods used for collecting data on this longer time frame are adapted from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Coastal Assessment (NCA). The five-year sampling assesses temperature, turbidity, conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, and water clarity values at each sampling location. Nutrient samples collected in conjunction with the water-quality parameters above include measuring concentration for chlorophyll a, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, dissolved inorganic nitrogen and dissolved inorganic phosphorus. As part of this park-wide assessment, sediment quality is sampled at 10-year intervals at 30 randomly selected sites in the vicinity of five parks using a Young-modified Van Veen grab sediment sampler. Sediment samples are analyzed for total organic carbon, sediment grain size, metals, mercury, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) compounds, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) compounds, and pesticides. By combining these approaches to monitoring, the network gains insight into the status of near-park water-quality as well as information for park managers on the temporal dynamics of water-quality at selected locations in each park. The overarching purposes of this protocol are to provide a monitoring framework for collecting scientifically sound data and to supply information to help evaluate the status and trends in water- and sediment-quality conditions that may affect the composition, structure, and function of park ecosystems and visitor experiences. These data can then be evaluated to help determine if current management practices are sustaining those functions and uses. Data collected under this protocol are stored in an SECN-managed database and uploaded annually to the National Park Service’s Environmental Quality Information System (EQuIS; Earthsoft 2020) database, maintained by the NPS Water Resources Division (WRD) In addition to utilizing customized data handling and reporting procedures, this protocol and its accompanying SOPs set guidelines for data to be made available internally to park resources managers and employees as well as for publication to larger audiences via annual data summaries (Appendix A).

Protocol for monitoring estuarine water and sediment quality in selected Southeast Coast Network parks: Protocol narrative—version 2.0

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