Effort underway to coordinate SAV assessments along West Coast

SCCWRP has begun coordinating with a network of West Coast monitoring agencies to build their capacity to assess the health of eelgrass beds and other submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) – an effort that will ensure Southern California monitoring data can be placed into West Coast-wide context.

During a meeting in April hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, SCCWRP introduced the SAV monitoring framework that SCCWRP co-developed in 2020 to quantitatively assess SAV health using standardized, bioassessment-based methods.

This framework already has been incorporated into the ongoing SAV study element of the Southern California Bight 2023 Regional Monitoring Program; it also is in the process of being incorporated into California’s Estuarine Marine Protected Areas (EMPA) monitoring program.

Coordinated West Coast monitoring will provide managers with access to high-quality, directly comparable data sets on the health of these ecologically fragile coastal habitats.