title: Changing anthropogenic influence on the Santa Monica Bay watershed.
abstract: Santa Monica Bay is an open coastal embayment located directly seaward of Los Angeles, California. The Bay provides vital economic value through its water-dependent activities, such as swimming, diving, boating, and fishing. An increase from 100,000 residents in 1900 to 10 million in 2000 has imposed numerous environmental stressors on the Bay, including urbanization of the watershed. Pollutant discharges into the Bay increased throughout the early part of the century, but declined following passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Since that time, the predominant source of pollutant inputs has changed from point sources to non-point urban runoff. To assess how present-day and historical pollution interact to affect the environmental quality of Santa Monica Bay, three organizations collaborated on a multi-disciplinary study in 1997, towards which this volume is focused. This paper details the temporal patterns of anthropogenic influence on Santa Monica Bay to provide context for the papers that follow.
authors.affiliation: Environmental Monitoring Division, City of Los Angeles, 12000 Vista del Mar, Playa del Rey, CA 90293, USA. mad@SAN.LACITY.org
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dojiri
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yamaguchi
authors.forename: S B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Weisberg
authors.forename: H J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D002140:California; D002947:Cities; D004777:Environment; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid; D014872:Water Movements; D014873:Water Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D014876:Water Pollution / Q000517:prevention & control; D014881:Water Supply
chemical_list: D014873:Water Pollutants