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Fish & Aquatic Life: Rapid Bioassessment

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Text on this page is from  Rapid Bioassessment Protocols for Use in Streams and Wadeable Rivers: Periphyton, Benthic Macroinvertebrates, and Fish, Second Edition. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.1999. 

The Rapid Bioassessment Protocols (RBPs) are essentially a synthesis of existing methods that have been employed by various State Water Resource Agencies (e.g., Ohio Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], Florida Department of Environmental Protection [DEP], Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control [DNREC], Massachusetts DEP, Kentucky DEP, and Montana Department of Environmental Quality [DEQ]). Protocols for 3 aquatic assemblages (i.e., periphyton, benthic macroinvertebrates, fish) and habitat assessment are presented. All of these protocols have been tested in streams in various parts of the country. The choice of a particular protocol should depend on the purpose of the bioassessment, the need to document conclusions with confirmational data, and available resources. The original Rapid Bioassessment Protocols were designed as inexpensive screening tools for determining if a stream is supporting or not supporting a designated aquatic life use. The basic information generated from these methods would enhance the coverage of broad geographical assessments, such as State and National 305(b) Water Quality Inventories. However, members of a 1986 benthic Rapid Bioassessment Workgroup and reviewers of this document indicated that the Rapid Bioassessment Protocols can also be applied to other program areas, for example:

• Characterizing the existence and severity of impairment to the water resource
• Helping to identify sources and causes of impairment
• Evaluating the effectiveness of control actions and restoration activities
• Supporting use attainability studies and cumulative impact assessments
• Characterizing regional biotic attributes of reference conditions

Therefore, the scope of this guidance is considered applicable to a wider range of planning and management purposes than originally envisioned, i.e., they may be appropriate for priority setting, point and nonpoint-source evaluations, use attainability analyses, and trend monitoring, as well as initial screening.

In the mid-1980's, the need for cost-effective biological survey techniques was realized because of rapidly dwindling resources for monitoring and assessment and the extensive miles of un-assessed stream miles in the United States. It was also recognized that the biological data needed to make informed decisions relevant to the Nation’s waters were greatly lacking across the country. It was further recognized that it was crucial to collect, compile, analyze, and interpret environmental data rapidly to facilitate management decisions and resultant actions for control and/or mitigation of impairment. Therefore, the principal conceptual underpinnings of the RBPs were:

• Cost-effective, yet scientifically valid, procedures for biological surveys
• Provisions for multiple site investigations in a field season
• Quick turn-around of results for management decisions
• Scientific reports easily translated to management and the public
• Environmentally-benign procedures.

The original RBPs were developed in two phases. The first phase centered on the development and refinement of the benthic macroinvertebrate protocols. The second phase involved the addition of analogous protocols pertinent to the assessment of fish assemblages. The benthic macroinvertebrate protocols were originally developed by consolidating procedures in use by various State water quality agencies. In 1985, a survey was conducted to identify States that routinely perform screening-level bioassessments and believed that such efforts were important to their monitoring programs. Guidance documents and field methods in common use were evaluated in an effort to identify successful bioassessment methods that used different levels of effort. Original survey materials and information obtained from direct personal contacts were used to develop the draft protocols.

Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Michigan Department of Natural Resources both used an approach upon which the screening protocol (RBP I) in the original document was based. The second (RBP II) was more time and labor intensive, incorporating field sampling and family-level taxonomy, and was a less intense version of RBP III. The concept of family-level taxonomy was based on the approach used by the Virginia State Water Control Board (SWCB) in the late 1980s. The third protocol (RBP III) incorporated certain aspects of the methods used by the North Carolina Division of Environmental Management (DEM) and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and was the most rigorous of the 3 approaches.

In response to a number of comments received from State and USEPA personnel on an earlier version of the RBPs, a set of fish protocols was also included. Fish protocol V was based on Karr's work (1981) with the Index of Biological Integrity (IBI), Gammon's Index of Well Being (1980), and standard fish population assessment models, coupled with certain modifications for implementation in different geographical regions. During the same time period as the development of the RBPs, Ohio EPA developed precedent-setting biological criteria using the IBI and Index of Well Being (IWB), as well as a benthic macroinvertebrate index, called the Invertebrate Community Index (ICI), and published methods and supporting documentation (Ohio EPA 1987). A substantial database on their use for site-specific fish and benthic macroinvertebrate assessments exists, and has been published (DeShon 1995, Yoder 1995, Yoder and Rankin 1995a,b). In the intervening years since 1989, several other states have followed suit with similar methods (Davis et al. 1996). A workgroup of State and USEPA Regional biologists (listed below) was formed in the late 1980's to review and refine the original draft protocols. The Rapid Bioassessment Workgroup was convened from 1987 through 1989 and included biologists using the State methods described above and biologists from other regions where pollution sources and aquatic systems differed from those areas for which the draft protocols were initially developed.

James Plafkin 1 , Assessment and Watershed Protection Division (AWPD), USEPA
Michael Bilger 2 , USEPA Region I
Michael Bastian 2 , USEPA Region VI
William Wuerthele, USEPA Region VIII
Evan Hornig 2 , USEPA Region X

Brenda Sayles, Michigan DNR
John Howland 2 , Missouri DNR
Robert Bode, New York DEC
David Lenat, North Carolina DEM
Michael Shelor 2 , Virginia SWCB
Joseph Ball, Wisconsin DNR

The original RBPs (Plafkin et al. 1989) have been widely distributed and extensively tested across the United States. Under the direction of Chris Faulkner, Monitoring Branch of AWPD the AWPD of USEPA, a series of workshops has been conducted across the Nation since 1989 that have been directed to training and discussions on the concept and approach to rapid bioassessment. As a result of these discussions and the opportunity of applying the techniques in various stream systems, the procedures have been improved and refined, while maintaining the basic concept of the RBPs. This document reflects those improvements and serves as an update to USEPA’s Rapid Bioassessment Protocols.

References

Barbour, M.T., J. Gerritsen, B.D. Snyder, and J.B. Stribling. 1999. Rapid Bioassessment Protocols for Use in Streams and Wadeable Rivers: Periphyton, Benthic Macroinvertebrates and Fish, Second Edition. EPA 841-B-99-002. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Office of Water; Washington, D.C.

CA Department of Fish and Game. 1999. California stream bioassessment procedure: Protocol brief for biological and physical/habitat assessment in wadeable streams. Aquatic Bioassessment/Water Pollution Control Laboratory. Rancho Cordova, CA. 15 pp.