Biological criteria

M. C. Bek, Fisheries Handbook of Engineering Fequirements and Biological Criteria, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, North Pacific Division, Portiand, Ore., 1991. 

Biological Criteria While the overall mandate of the Clean Water Act may now be more clearly stated and understood, the tools needed are stiU under development, and their bill application is being worked out. The direction is towards a more comprehensive approach to water quality protection, which might be more appropriately termed water resource protection to encompass the living resources and their habitat along with the water itself. 

In 1991, EPA directed states to adopt biological criteria into their water-quahty standards by September 30, 1993. To assist the states, EPA issued its Pohcy on the Use of Biological Assessments and Criteria in the Water-Quahty Program, which sets forth the key policy directions governing the shift to the use of biological criteria ... 

States should designate aquatic hfe uses that appropriately address biological integrity and adopt biological criteria necessary to protect those uses. ... 

These pohcy statements are founded on the existing language and authorities in Clean Water Act Sections 303 (c) (2) (A) and (Bf EPA defined biological criteria as numerical values or narrative expressions used to describe the expected structure and function of the aquatic community. ... 

From the perspective of ecological integrity called for in the Clean Water Act, any adjustment to the implementation of toxic metals criteria needs to be integrated with both sediment criteria and biological criteria to provide ecosystem protection envisioned by the Act. 

Although air quality standards are based predominantly on biological criteria, students should understand the physical criteria that also deserve consideration. 

Southerland MT, Stribhng JB. 1995. Status of biological criteria development and implementation. In Davis WS, Simon TP, editors. Biological assessment and criteria tools for water resource planning and decision making. Boca Raton (FL) Lewis Pubhshers, p. 81-96. 

Discrete horse-dog and sheep-dog forms of E. granulosus occur that differ in a wide spectrum of biological criteria. Of public health... 

U.S. EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) (1996a) Biological criteria - Technical Guidance for Streams and Small Rivers, Revised edition, EPA 822-B96-001, Office of Science and Technology, Health and Ecological Criteria, U.S. EPA, Washington, DC, USA. 

EPA and many states are now moving toward a watershed or basin management approach to water management. This is a holistic approach that looks at the multiple stresses and activities that affect a basin and evaluates these effects in the context of the survival of ecological systems. Biological criteria are recognized by states as a necessary... 

Simply enumerating the chemical abnormalities in entities that are still defined by clinical rather than biological criteria is unlikely to have lasting value, as those categories become increasingly out of date and discarded. On the other hand, mechanisms that have been defined experimentally are not likely to stay scientifically valid, although our understanding of them will, it is hoped, continue to deepen. 

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