ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND RESEARCH INITIATIVE - A PRIORITY ACTIVITY FOR THE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL AND NATURAL-RESOURCES

The Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR) has recogniz ed a high priority need to integrate and coordinate federal agencies' efforts in order to enable a comprehensive evaluation of our nation's environmental resources and ecological systems. The federal government spends about $640 million per year collecting data about our forests, agricultural and rangelands, lakes, rivers, estuaries, and coastal ma rine systems. These efforts have significantly aided the progress in p reserving and protecting the environment in recent decades but are not sufficiently coordinated to provide us a truly comprehensive status r eport or full understanding of the causes and effects of environmental change. This paper describes the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources and its functions, provides a status report on the Environm ental Monitoring and Research Initiative, and offers some perspectives on the factors that will make the initiative and its contributing pro grams a success. In particular, the paper discusses the potential rela tionship with the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMA P).