Biological Integrity: A Long‐Neglected Aspect of Water Resource Management

Abstract

Abstract. Water of sufficient quality and quantity is critical to all life. Increasing human population and growth of technology require human society to devote more and more attention to protection of adequate supplies of water. Although perception of biological degradation stimulated current state and federal legislation on the quality of water resources that biological focus was lost in the search for easily measured physical and chemical surrogates. The "fishable and swimmable" goal ofthe Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 (PL 92-500) and its charge to "restore and maintain" biotic integrity illustrate that law's biological underpinning. Further, the need for operational definitions of terms like "biological integrity" and "unreasonable degradation" and for ecologically sound tools to measure divergence from societal goals have increased interest in biological monitoring. Assessment of water resource quality by sampling biological communities in the field (ambient biological monitoring) is a promising approach that requires expanded use of ecological expe~ise. One such approach, the Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI), provides a broadly based, multi parameter tool for the assessment of biotic integrity in running waters. IBI based on fish community attributes has now been applied widely in North America. The success of IBI has stimulated the development of similar approaches using other aquatic taxa. Expanded use of ecological expertise in ambient biological monitoring is essential to the protection of water resources. Ecologists have the expertise to contribute significantly to those programs.

Predicting assemblages and species richness of endemic fish in the upper Yangtze River

“…To evaluate the changes of communities in space and/or time, diversity indices are commonly used (Hellawell, 1986;Karr, 1991;Legendre and Legendre, 1998;Oberdorff et al, 2002). Among them, species richness (SR) is an integrative descriptor of the animal community, because it is influenced by a large number of natural environmental factors as well as anthropogenic disturbances, including the geological history of the area, environmental stability, ecosystem productivity and heterogeneity (Lenat, 1988;Céréghino et al, 2003).…”

Theoretical predictions of observed to expected ratios in RIVPACS-type predictive model assessments of stream biological condition

“…1) has been most frequently cited and also has the highest annual citation rate. Karr (1991) is a general treatment of the need for ecological assessments given environmental protection policy in the USA. This paper does not focus specifically on development of the reference condition, but Karr does discuss the importance of The effect of habitat-specific sampling on biological assessment of water quality using a predictive model Moss et al 1987; Fig.…”

Review and evaluation of estuarine biotic indices to assess benthic condition

“…Thus, combining several metrics, each of them providing information on a biological attribute, in such way that, when integrated, determines the systems' overall status and condition. This is the main strength of biotic indices, since they allow the integration of the ecosystem's information and parameters (Karr, 1991), providing a broader understanding of the system's processes.…”