Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century - Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead - page 113

between environmental stressors and health outcomes. The benefits of collabora-
tion, discussed in several places in this report, apply to monitoring.
Finding: It is difficult to understand the overall state of the environment unless
one knows what it has been in the past and how it is changing over time. Typi-
cally this can only be achieved by examining high-quality time series of key
indicators of environmental quality and performance. Currently at EPA, there
are few long-term monitoring programs, let alone programs that are systematic
and rigorous.
Recommendation: The committee recommends that EPA invest substantial
effort to generate broader, deeper, and sustained support for long-term
monitoring of key indicators of environmental quality and performance.
Science That Is Collaborative
EPA is a world leader in producing and using science for informed envi-
ronmental protection, but many other public and private parties in the United
States and around the world are also making important contributions in envi-
ronmental sciences and engineering. Many other parties are working outside the
conventional environmental science and engineering space but may have tech-
nologies, methods, or data streams that could prove valuable for environmental
protection. EPA needs to enhance its ability to draw on those other resources,
collaborate with others, and offer leadership, especially in issues that are critical
for informing its present missions and for providing the understanding that it
will need to address future environmental problems.
Collaborating Among Agencies
Over the years, many investigators in the United States and around the
world have looked to EPA to provide leadership in identifying important and
emerging problems in environmental science and technology. Individual contact
by EPA scientists can help to influence and steer the work of others, but more
formal strategies are also needed to influence and direct the focus of research
conducted outside EPA. The STAR grants and other extramural support have
helped to do that in the context of US universities, but these extramural awards
are smaller than those for most research activities relevant to EPA's mission. In
some circumstances, EPA may want to consider enhancing its efforts to proac-
tively identify opportunities to collaborate with other federal agencies and na-
tional laboratories when practical. In other circumstances, EPA may want to
place more focus on clearly articulating the importance of specific research top-
ics to support EPA needs and improve environmental protection more generally.
There has for some time been an established mechanism for coordinating
science among agencies of the federal government. It is accomplished through