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Communication at the NABS Annual meeting, Keystone, 2000
(62) DEFINING THE RANGE OF BIOTIC INTEGRITY.
S.P. Jackson1 and S.P. Davies2. 1USEPA, Office of Science and Technology, Washington, DC, 2Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Augusta, ME
The USA’s Clean Water Act offers no definition of biological integrity, and the USEPA lets states manage their waters across a gradient of aquatic life uses. However, the range of federally acceptable conditions for these uses is not defined. States have determined both biological impairment and acceptable conditions with inadequate biological data. If development of gradients of aquatic life uses and biocriteria are left to the discretion of the 100 or so states, tribes and other rule-making bodies, a federal minimum standard of biotic integrity, with explicit technical definitions, is needed. The standard should be quantifiable with state or region-specific data, and should describe the minimum ecological attributes and characteristics of biotic communities that possess biological integrity. It should further describe conditions that can result in an automatic finding of non-attainment of minimum federal standards.
Presented at 8:00 AM on Tuesday, May 30, 2000 in Determining Good Sites from Bad I
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