What is river health

1
What is river health?

• Key points from the Karr article, in your binder

2
Some of the controversies surrounding the science
behind environmental health

• Can we define and measure environmental goods and
  services?
• Is health a state or a process (or both)?
• State what a healthy environment should look
  like in terms of plants, animals, landscape, etc.
• Process what a healthy ecosystem should do in
  terms of cycling nutrients, heat, oxygen, carbon,
  etc.
• What is normal and how does that relate to
  ecosystem disturbance?
• resistance resilience to disturbance level of
  organization in the environment
• natural vs. anthropogenic (human-induced)
  disturbance
• pulse (acute) vs. press (chronic) disturbance
• Can we quantitatively measure health using
  biological endpoints, or is this more of a policy
  goal?
• Clean Air Act, Federal Water Pollution Control
  Act, Solid Waste Disposal Act, Wild and Scenic
  Rivers Act, National Environmental Policy Act,
  Federal Pesticide Act, Endangered Species Act,
  Safe Drinking Water Act, Toxic Substances Control
  Act, Clean Water Act, CERCLA, MT Constitution

3
Biological Integrity

• Biological systems with integrity provide a
  baseline for assessing ecosystem health
• Pristine sites like Yellowstone, Glacier, Red
  Rocks, Bob Marshall
• A biological system has integrity if it
• Has minimal human influence
• Supports full range of recently historic native
  biota
• Evolution biogeography climate geology
  human interference native biota
• Biological integrity varies geographically
• Ecoregions aquatic vs. terrestrial

4
5 Factors that can alter integrity

• Flow regime
• Physical habitat structure
• Water quality
• Energy source
• Biological interactions

Which do we measure in the field?
5
The Multimetric Index

• Relating the 5 factors to biological conditions
  using a multimetric index of organisms and their
  life history traits
• Developing an index
• 1) Classify landscape
• 2) Select metrics of organisms and their traits
• 3) Develop field and lab sample methods
• 4) Analyze data to reveal biological patterns
• 5) Communicate biological condition results to
  the public, land managers

Which do we do in the field?
6
Relationship of teaching about Biological
Integrity and Multimetric Approaches to MT
Standards

• Content standard 1
• testable hypotheses, math/graphical tools,
  science as process with revision, validity of
  experimental design
• Content standard 2
• relationship between chemistry, biology, energy
• Content standard 3
• How abiotic and biotic processes affect
  populations, biological classification tools,
  genetics (fish)
• Content standard 4
• weather and climate, geology, remote sensing
• Content standard 5
• Scientific thought, innovation, collaboration,
  limitations