In 1987-88 the Marine Pollution Monitoring Management Group
(MPMMG), now known as the Marine Environment Monitoring Group
(MEMG) reviewed the monitoring carried out in UK estuaries and
coastal waters. They concluded that there should be consistent
national standards for marine environmental quality in all UK
waters and a core programme of monitoring to use these standards
should be implemented involving regular sampling of a network of
estuarine and coastal monitoring stations.
A network of coastal monitoring stations in estuarine,
intermediate and offshore locations around the UK was therefore
established. The stations chosen for sampling include both sites
that may be significantly contaminated and those that are free from
anthropogenic inputs, which serve as reference sites. This
programme is known as the
National Marine Monitoring Programme (NMMP) and methods were
laid out in the NMMP monitoring manual known as the
Green Book.
The programme is designed to fulfil the UK's mandatory
monitoring requirements under the
OSPAR Joint Assessment and Monitoring Programme
(JAMP) and also in support of EC Directives including the EU Water
Framework Directive. The NMMP is co-ordinated by a working group of
representatives from various agencies responsible for the data
collection. The National Marine Monitoring Programme Working Group
(NMMP WG) has 3 sub groups to ensure strict quality control of data
collection and analysis and to ensure there are consistent national
standards. These are:
In addition, there is a statistical group, which meets on an
ad-hoc basis to support the work of the NMMP.
The NMMP WG makes recommendations to MEMG as to how
new methods are best implemented in the UK. Through its
monitoring programme it detects long-term trends in physical,
biological and chemical variables at selected sites in order to
establish if regulatory measures are effective in protecting the
marine environment. From this the NMMP provides and maintains a
high quality dataset for key chemical and biological variables in
the marine environment of the UK and produces reports (see below)
with overviews of the spatial and temporal distributions of these
variables and their inter-relationships.
Existing surveillance programmes, such as the NMMP, will make
a significant contribution to the Special Areas of Conservation
(SAC) monitoring programme, directly via the provision of data
where sampling stations fall within the SAC boundary, and
indirectly by providing contextual information on local, regional
and national trends in biological and chemical parameters.
Contextual information will facilitate comparisons of local
site-based trends with national trends, to hopefully explain
changes and ensure consistency of judgements at the national level.
The wider application of the data from the National Marine
Monitoring Programme: monitoring Special Areas of Conservation is
further discussed within the case studies found within the UK
National Marine Monitoring Programme -
Second Report (1999-2001).
JNCC represents the UK conservation agencies (CCW, EHS, SNH,
Natural England (formally English Nature)) on the NMMP Working
Group to ensure that data from the NMMP will contribute to
condition monitoring of SACs either directly, or as contextual
information. This issue is discussed further in Section 1 of the
Marine Monitoring Handbook.