The environmental program at Kennedy Space Center - Baseline to monitoring

KSC has developed an environmental program to ensure that its activities do not adversely affect the surrounding environment. Two essential elements of the total program are the baseline and monitoring programs. The goal of the baseline program is to collect sufficient information about the environment prior to Shuttle launches so that adverse changes in the environment - if and when they occur after the Shuttle program becomes active - can be detected and cause-effect relationships established when possible. The goal of the monitoring program is to use information from the baseline program along with survey and sampling operations during the period of initial Shuttle launches to document adverse changes in the environment.