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WESTERN ASSESSMENT CENTER, UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY SPECIAL STUDIES
Impact/Purpose:
Objectives of the project include the following:
1) Coordinate and establish the advisory board for the Western Regional Center for Biological Monitoring and Assessment of Freshwater Ecosystems,
2) Provide technical assistance to the State and EPA Regions 8 and 10 aquatic monitoring personnel with respect to development and implementation of aquatic monitoring and assessment procedures, and
3) Collaborate with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality to evaluate and illustrate the applicability of EPA's tiered aquatic life use conceptual model to a western State's bioassessment data.
Description:
The project involves: a) Providing technical advise to state, tribal and federal water resource managers regarding collection and analysis of environmental data, b) Creation of a set of internet-accessible predictive models for assessing the biological condition of streams useful to tribes, state and federal agencies. c) Continued refinement of standard operating procedures for collection and laboratory processing of invertebrate and algal biological data. d) Develpment of "conversion" procedures to allow for 1) input of biological data (collected with different standard operating procedures) into RIVPAC-type predictive models, and 2) direct comparison of model outputs derived from data collected with different sampling methods. e) Collaberation with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality to evaluate and illustrate the applicability of EPA's tiered aquatic life use conceptual model to a western State's bioassessment data.