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For rivers in the lower 48 states, habitat condition was estimated by analyzing how strongly a range of human disturbances to habitat affects river fish in all parts of the country, using the logic that fish reflect the quality of the habitat where they live. For each disturbance type, we identified the disturbance level at which fish with a strong reliance on high quality habitats showed marked declines in abundance, and where these fish disappeared from the ecosystem altogether. This information was used to score streams according to their most likely condition given the values of disturbances in each location. In the maps, streams that are expected to be in good condition have a low or very low risk of current...
Citation: Esselman, P., D. Infante, L. Wang, A. Cooper, D. Wieferich, Y. Tsang, D. Thornbrugh, W. Taylor. 2013. Regional fish community indicators of landscape disturbance to catchments of the conterminous United States. Ecological Indicators 26:163-173. Abstract: Biological assessments of river conditions are increasingly conducted at regional and continental scales that match the extent of large-scale river management efforts. Multimetric indices composed of biological community indicators are commonly used to assess ecological condition and indices have recently been applied in large regions. Methods for large-scale multimetric index creation emphasize repeatability, comparability across regions, and objective...
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