Bioassessment of Freshwater Ecosystems

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Bioassessment of Freshwater Ecosystems

   • Robert C. Bailey, Richard H. Norris, Trefor B. Reynoldson

   Pages 1-15

3. Introduction to the Case Studies

   • Robert C. Bailey, Richard H. Norris, Trefor B. Reynoldson

   Pages 17-25

4. Defining the Reference Condition

   • Robert C. Bailey, Richard H. Norris, Trefor B. Reynoldson

   Pages 27-62

5. Variation in the Reference Condition

   • Robert C. Bailey, Richard H. Norris, Trefor B. Reynoldson

   Pages 63-118

6. Decision-Making

   • Robert C. Bailey, Richard H. Norris, Trefor B. Reynoldson

   Pages 119-132

7. Beyond Pass and Fail

   • Robert C. Bailey, Richard H. Norris, Trefor B. Reynoldson

   Pages 133-144

8. The Reference Condition Approach

   • Robert C. Bailey, Richard H. Norris, Trefor B. Reynoldson

   Pages 145-152

9. Back Matter

   Pages 153-170

   PDF

Aquatic ecosystem assessment is a rapidly developing field, and one of the newer approaches to assessing the condition of rivers and lakes is the Reference Condition Approach. This is a significant advancement in biomonitoring because it solves the problem of trying to locate nearby control or reference sites when studying an ecosystem that may be degraded, a problem that bedevils traditional approaches. Rather than using upstream reference sites in a river system or next-bay-over reference sites in a lake, an array of ecologically similar, least-exposed to stress sites scattered throughout a catchment or region is used. Once the reference condition has been established, any site suspected of being impacted can be assessed by comparison to the reference sites, and its status determined. The Reference Condition database, once formed, can be used repeatedly.

• biomonitoring
• ecosystem
• environment
• invertebrates
• lake
• ecotoxicology

• Department of Biology, The University of Western Ontario, Canada

  Robert C. Bailey

• Cooperative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology, University of Canberra, Australia

  Richard H. Norris

• National Water Research Institute, Environment Canada, Acadia Centre for Estuarine Research, Nova Scotia, Canada

  Trefor B. Reynoldson

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