The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is charged with protecting the natural environment and those aspects of human health directly related to environmental factors. Historically this has meant controlling discharges to air, water and land, and working to both minimize and remedy the pollution of these media. Regulation of releases to the environment from point sources like waste discharge pipes and smokestacks, and the management of wastes themselves, have been particular focus areas. It has become increasingly clear that protection of the environment and human health requires a more comprehensive approach. Today, the DEP strives to protect and manage uses of land and other resources to ensure that not only future generations of people can thrive but also wild plants, animals and their critical habitats. The DEP continues its efforts to preserve environmental resources including air, water, land and healthy ecosystems.

Periodic assessments of environmental conditions can provide insight into the effectiveness of the DEP’s current efforts and offer guidance for future efforts. In monitoring and reporting on environmental conditions, it is useful to focus on measures, or indicators, of environmental health. Environmental indicators are quantitative measures of conditions and trends that are used to assess the state of the environment and natural resources and, where possible, to gauge progress towards specific goals. Indicators are necessary because the condition of an environmental factor, such as water or air quality, is often made up of many different components and it can be difficult or impossible to directly measure them all. The choice of measures is also limited to those environmental parameters for which there are accurate and appropriate data, preferably long-term data that can clarify and illustrate any trends that may exist.

Since 1998, the DEP has been publishing periodic “State of The Environment” reports that provide general information on trends and conditions for a variety of environmental factors that, together, comprise an overall assessment of our state’s environmental health. In this year’s report, “New Jersey’s Environment Trends”, forty-eight chapters are presented. Each chapter describes a specific area in which the DEP has been working to improve conditions and presents a specific environmental measure or category of measurements meaningful in gauging the current status of the environment in New Jersey. This report was released in early 2006. Some chapters have been updated, as indicated.

Some of these measures have been discussed in earlier DEP reports and the DEP believes it is important to continue tracking them. Others are new. Reasonably good data exist for each of these measures. Where goals or end points are associated with a measure, these are presented. Some goals are expressed formally in laws or rules. For example, a clear-cut goal noted in the chapter “Ozone” is compliance with the federal ozone standard. Other measures can be compared with assumed or implied goals, such as a stable or increasing population of a wildlife species like the bald eagle. For example, in the chapter “Wildlife Populations: Bald Eagle,” the recently increasing population of these birds can be considered a positive development, despite the lack of a formal goal of a specific number of breeding pairs of these birds.

When compared with explicit or implicit goals, some trends are encouraging and show clear evidence of progress. Others reflect situations that appear to be worsening and challenges that lie ahead. Many trends reflect both current and past conditions and are subject to changes in the future due to factors that are, in some cases, poorly understood and beyond the direct control of the DEP.

There are a variety of ways that these chapters could be organized. No single framework suffices because environmental systems are interrelated, overlapping, and dynamic. For example, water quality is affected not only by discharges from point sources but by atmospheric deposition of pollutants from local, regional and national sources. Water quality is also affected by land use and, in some cases, by factors that affect water quantity, which in turn may be affected by global climate changes, which are in turn affected by human activity in a variety of ways, and so on.

You may download or review individual chapters of the report as discreet PDF documents using the index of chapters provided in the adjacent table. In addition, a reference matrix is provided to help explain the relationship between different topic areas in order to view all pertinent chapters of the report.

In the matrix, the chapters are listed alphabetically by title alongside one or more major focus categories. The major categories in the matrix are air, water, land use, regional & global issues, public health, pollution prevention & solid waste, and wildlife. This matrix can help a reader to find those chapters that relate to a particular interest or subject area. Chapters that pertain to a particular category will have an “X” in the column corresponding to that category or categories. For example, chapters on air toxics, atmospheric deposition (two chapters), climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, mercury emissions, NOx and VOCs, ozone, PM2.5, pollution prevention, radon, site remediation, solid waste and recycling, and vehicle miles traveled are marked as being especially relevant to the major category of “air”. Only the most obvious relationships are identified in the matrix. Other chapters may also be relevant to some degree because many environmental factors are interrelated. However, a first look at the marked chapters should help most readers focus on the specifics of their areas of interest.

View Reference Matrix

Principal Author: Dr. Mike Aucott, Research Scientist, DSRT
Co-Author: Adriana Caldarelli, Research Scientist, DSRT

For comments or questions regarding this report, please contact Dr. Aucott.