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DEVELOPING TOOLS TO ASSESS THE ECOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE NATION'S AQUATIC SYSTEMS
Citation:
BLAIR, R. L. DEVELOPING TOOLS TO ASSESS THE ECOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE NATION'S AQUATIC SYSTEMS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/620/F-06/001, 2006.
Description:
The Aquatic Monitoring and Bioassement Branch (AMBB) at the Environmental Protection Agency's Western Ecology Division leads ORD's research on monitoring freshwater aquatic systems. This work is in response to the Clean Water Act (CWA, Section 305b) that requires EPA to report biennially on the status of water quality throughout the United States. This report, prepared in partnership with the states and tribal nations, is intended to provide a statement of the condition of all the nation's waters and trends in those conditions over time. EPA aggregates state and tribal data to create the report for Congress. In addition to describing condition of the waters, the report includes a discussion of the relative importance of the various stresses or causes of degraded water quality. The interpretation of the report has been challenged because each state and tribal nation uses different monitoring methods.