Defining and measuring river health

Abstract

Summary 1. Society benefits immeasurably from rivers. Yet over the past century, humans have changed rivers dramatically, threatening river health. As a result, societal well‐being is also threatened because goods and services critical to human society are being depleted. 2. ‘Health’— shorthand for good condition (e.g. healthy economy, healthy communities) — is grounded in science yet speaks to citizens. 3. Applying the concept of health to rivers is a logical outgrowth of scientific principles, legal mandates, and changing societal values. 4. Success in protecting the condition, or health, of rivers depends on realistic models of the interactions of landscapes, rivers, and human actions. 5. Biological monitoring and biological endpoints provide the most integrative view of river condition, or river health. Multimetric biological indices are an important and relatively new approach to measuring river condition. 6. Effective multimetric indices depend on an appropriate classification system, the selection of metrics that give reliable signals of river condition, systematic sampling protocols that measure those biological signals, and analytical procedures that extract relevant biological patterns. 7. Communicating results of biological monitoring to citizens and political leaders is critical if biological monitoring is to influence environmental policies. 8. Biological monitoring is essential to identify biological responses to human actions. By using the results to describe the condition, or health, of rivers and their adjacent landscapes and to diagnose causes of degradation, we can develop restoration plans, estimate the ecological risks associated with land use plans in a watershed, or select among alternative development options to minimize river degradation.

Developing a Benthic Index of Biological Integrity and Some Relationships to Environmental Factors in the Subtropical Xiangxi River, China

“…Aquatic ecosystems, and their biological assemblages, continued to be degraded globally from anthropogenic activities in their watersheds (GANASAN and HUGHES, 1998;KARR, 1999). Part of the decline in water resources stems from insufficient consideration of their biological structure and function (KARR, 1999;STODDARD et al, 2006).…”

“…Part of the decline in water resources stems from insufficient consideration of their biological structure and function (KARR, 1999;STODDARD et al, 2006). Some factors have been reported which are linked to river degradation.…”

Response of chlorophyll a to total nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations in lotic ecosystems: a systematic review protocol

“…Biota integrate impacts over time and so can better represent ecological condition compared to snapshot water quality measurements [21][22][23][24]. Environmental managers often use this biological information to evaluate impacts of chronic pollution (e.g.…”

Assessment of River Ecological Quality Using B-IBI (Dez River, Southwestern of Iran)

“…Water quality may only partially reflect environmental impact [1]. Physical, chemical and bacteriological measurements commonly form the basis of monitoring, because they provide complete spectrum of information for proper water management [4]. However, in running waters, where changes in hydrology are rapid and difficult to estimate, they cannot reflect the integration of numerous environment factors and long-term sustainability of river ecosystems for their instantaneous nature.…”