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Uses of Data
Biocriteria Links
Protect Your Watershed
Biological assessment data can be used to evaluate the ecological improvements from restoration/rehabilitation activities conducted through state watershed protection approaches. Bioassessment data are also critical to the success of watershed ecological risk assessment efforts.
A watershed protection approach is a strategy for effectively protecting and restoring aquatic ecosystems and protecting human health. This strategy has as its premise that many water quality and ecosystem problems are best solved at the watershed level rather than at the individual waterbody or discharger level. Major features of a watershed protection approach are: targeting priority problems, promoting a high level of stakeholder involvement, integrated solutions that make use of the expertise and authority of multiple agencies, and measuring success through monitoring and other data gathering.
This approach focuses on hydrologically defined drainage basins - watersheds - rather than on areas defined by political boundaries. Thus, for a given watershed, the approach encompasses not only the water resource, such as a stream, river, lake, estuary, or aquifer, but all the land from which water drains to the resource. To protect water resources, it is increasingly important to address the condition of land areas within the watershed because as water drains off the land or leaches to the ground water it carries with it the effects of human activities throughout the watershed. The watershed approach places emphasis on all aspects of water resource quality: physical (e.g., temperature, flow, mixing, habitat); chemical (e.g., conventional and toxic pollutants such as nutrients and pesticides); biological (e.g., health and integrity of biotic communities, biodiversity). For more information on the strategy behind a watershed approach, see EPA document number EPA-800-F-96-001 (February 1996) Why Watersheds?
Biological assessments and criteria can be important components of state and tribal watershed management programs focused on prioritizing/targeting actions, setting restoration goals, setting performance standards, and documenting results.
North Carolina Experience
For example, North Carolina has adopted narrative biocriteria into their water quality standards regulation that references standardized methods for data collection and analysis for fish and macroinvertebrates. By citing the standardized methods, North Carolina establishes a mechanism for consistent, quantitative translation of the narrative biological criteria. Under the state's relatively new five year basin-wide management program, benthic macroinvertebrate and fish community data are presented in individual basin-wide assessment reports.
Macroinvertebrate and fish community surveys, special studies, and other water quality sampling activities are conducted in the second and third years of the cycle to provide information for assessing water quality status and trends through the basin. Water Quality Management Plans are being developed for all of the state's major river basins based on the five year cycle.
How can bioassessments be used as a tool for watershed management?
Bioassessments and biocriteria shift the focus of water quality programs from strict pollutant source control to broader resource management. This shift represents a progression from technology-based approaches to water quality-based approaches. Many programs in watershed management plans can use bioassessment data. For example, bioassessments facilitate periodic evaluation and refinement of use attainment/non-attainment, which in turn helps water quality managers determine the relative success or failure of management strategies.
By including a biological perspective, water quality programs can incorporate management strategies that directly address the goals of the Clean Water Act and, thus, provide meaningful results to the public.
Case studies illustrating
the use of bioassessment data in state watershed management programs
These case studies illustrate how bioassessments can be used to
measure the effectiveness of programs, establish management priorities,
and provide data for increased regulatory protection.