7.4 Habitat Monitoring
7.4.2 Aquatic Habitats Monitoring Strategies for monitoring various community types include expanding monitoring eforts on public lands, initiating monitoring protocols on key private lands (especially industrial forest land), and collaborating with key partners (e.g., USFS, DOD, USFWS) and private timber companies. NCDWR conducts extensive Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI) monitoring for their basin-wide planning eforts, including lake assessments, phytoplankton monitoring, physical and chemical water quality monitoring, and aquatic toxicity monitoring (as well as fsh and benthic macroinvertebrate monitoring). NCDWR also designates and maintains a list of impaired waters (305(b) and 303(d) Reports) and tracks percent impervious surfaces by basin. Where dams regulate stream fow, long-term monitoring and research are needed to deter- mine if existing minimum fow requirements are adequate to support aquatic communities and not just available habitat. Te data generated from monitoring can be used to establish thresholds for fow requirements (i.e., ecological fows) necessary to sustain all riverine and riparian processes. Tis is especially important where there is a lack of biological and hydrological data and knowledge about synergistic infuences such as water velocities, water quality, salinity, temperature, and DO. NOAA Fisheries conducts submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) mapping and monitoring in coordination with EPA and NCDWR. According to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan (CHPP) (Deaton et al. 2010) , however, no quantifed trends analysis is available for the state, as currently there is only one complete SAV mapping dataset (1983–91) (Street et al. 2004) . CHPP (Deaton et al. 2010) includes a broad recommendation to coordinate and enhance water qual- ity, physical habitat, and fsheries resource monitoring from headwaters to the nearshore ocean (key partners include NCDMF, NCDWR, NCDCM, NCWRC). Recommendations in CHPP call for a site-specifc, compound-specifc monitoring program to assess potential impacts of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in North Carolina’s estuaries. Estuarine monitoring of the concentration and prevalence of priority chemicals of concern, with a possible focus on the Neuse River system and research on the efects of EDCs on fshery species, particularly blue crab, oysters, and fsh, should be a priority. Analysis and monitoring of long-term trends in estuarine salinity and temperature is needed to evaluate the impact of SLR and climate change on fshery resources in North Carolina. It is also important to quantify the episodic and chronic efects of trawling on nursery functions in diferent estuarine settings. CHPP also identifes a number of key monitoring needs across specifc coastal fsheries habitats. Tese are:
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2015 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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