The assessment of ecological integrity remains a primary component of present-day conservation strategies for freshwater ecosystems, but approaches vary widely in method, scale, efficiency, and sustainability. The need for standardized assessment practices have been noted in several national conservation initiatives. The range of approaches under development or in use by LCCs and partner agencies offered a timely opportunity to summarize the range of approaches, identify data that would facilitate particularly promising methods, and evaluate the success with which assessments are currently integrated into broad conservation planning and management. The investigators goals for this project were to provide LCCs and partners with recommendations of best practices for evaluating aquatic ecological integrity at different landscape scales; identify critical data needs; and help develop a sustainable, collaborative network around improving integration of assessment products. Investigators expected that regional LCCs would particularly benefit from identification of promising approaches that would pinpoint critical data or information systems for development in their region. Investigators proposed a second major product - a decision support and guidance tool for selection of assessments that facilitates broad conservation planning, to be directed largely at Western LCCs and partners. Investigators anticipated, however, that these recommendations would be generalizable and assist other regional LCCs as well as national initiatives and partnerships (e.g., the National Fish Habitat Partnership) engaged in large-scale conservation planning.
