Technical Bulletin No. 0941: A Review of Macroinvertebrate and Fish Metrics and Indices of Biotic Integrity: Spatial and Temporal Patterns in the Long-term Receiving Water Study Ri

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has mandated the use of biological criteria in the assessment and regulation of water quality and ecosystem health. Fish, macroinvertebrate, or algal communities are used to develop metrics based on characteristics and the relative abundance of certain groups within the assemblage to infer physical and chemical characteristics of aquatic systems. Often, these metrics are combined into an Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI) to assess the ability to support and maintain a balanced, integrated, adaptive biological system possessing the structure and function expected in the natural habitat of a given region.