Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Figures, Tables, and Boxes
Acknowledgments
Life in Running Waters
Section I: Aquatic Resources Are Still Declining
Premise I: Water resources are losing their living components
Premise 2: "Clean water" is not enough
Premise 3: Biological monitoring is essential to protect biological resources
Premise 4: "Health" and "integrity" are meaningful for environmental management
Section II: Changing Waters and Changing Views Led to Biological Monitoring
Premise 5: Changing waters and a changing society call for better assessment
Premise 6: Biological monitoring detects biological changes caused by humans
Premise 7: Ecological risk assessment and risk management depend on biological monitoring
Section III: Multimetric Indexes Convey Biological Information
Premise 8: Understanding biological
Premise 9: Only a few biological attributes provide reliable signals about biological condition
Premise 10: Graphs reveal biological responses to human influence
Premise 11: Similar biological attributes are reliable indicators in diverse circumstances
Premise 12: Tracking complex systems requires a measure that integrates multiple factors
Premise 13: Multimetric biological indexes incorporate levels from individuals to landscapes
Premise 14: Metrics are selected to yield relevant biological information at reasonable cost
Premise 15: Multimetric indexes are built from proven metrics and a scoring system
Premise 16: The statistical properties of multimetric indexes are known
Premise 17: Multimetric indexes reflect biological responses to human activities
Premise 18: How biology and statistics are used is more important than taxon
Premise 19: Sampling protocols are well defined for fishes and invertebrates
Premise 20: The precision of sampling protocols can be estimated by evaluating the components of variance
Premise 21: Multimetric indexes are biologically meaningful
Premise 22: Multimetric protocols can work in environments other than streams
Section IV: For a Robust Multimetric Index, Avoid Common Pitfalls
Premise 23: Properly classifying sites is key
Premise 24: Avoid focusing primarily on species
Premise 25: Measuring the wrong things sidetracks biological monitoring
Premise 26: Field work is more valuable than geographic information systems
Premise 27: Sampling everything is not the goal
Premise 28: Putting probability-based sampling before defining metrics is a mistake
Premise 29: Counting 100-individual subsamples yields too few date for multimetric assessment
Premise 30: Avoid thinking in regulatory dichotomies
Premise 31: Reference condition must be defined properly
Premise 32: Statistical decision rules are no substitute for biological judgment
Premise 33: Multivariate statistical analyses often overlook biological knowledge
Premise 34: Assessing habitat cannot replace assessing the biota
Section V: Many Criticisms of Multimetric Indexes Are Myths
Myth I: "Biology is to variable to monitor"
Myth 2: "Biological assessment is circular"
Myth 3: "We can't prove that humans degrade living systems without knowing the mechanism"
Myth 4: "Indexes combine and thus lose information"
Myth 5: "Multimetric indexes aren't effective because their statistical properties are uncertain"
Myth 6: "A nontrivial effort is required to calibrate the index regionally"
Myth 7: "The sensitivity of multimetric indexes is unknown"
Section VI: The Future Is Now
Premise 35: We can and must translate biological condition into regulatory standards
Premise 36: Citizens are changing their thinking faster than bureaucracies
Premise 37: Can we afford healthy waters? We can afford nothing less
References
Index
About the Authors