All news related to Bioassessment

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has unveiled a national strategy intended to bring standardization and consistency to how environmental DNA (eDNA) methods get incorporated into aquatic ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed a screening-level causal assessment of the San Luis Rey River watershed in San Diego County using an approach co-developed by SCCWRP that rapidly identifies ... More

SCCWRP has partnered with two State agencies to build their capacity to systematically identify streams in good ecological condition that should be priorities for protection, as well as identify which ... More

The Southern California Bight Regional Monitoring Program is kicking off a first-of-its-kind regional monitoring survey this September to evaluate the health of the region’s eelgrass beds based on their ecological ... More

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are preparing to release final versions of flow classification tools intended to help watershed managers determine which streams ... More

The Southern California Bight Regional Monitoring Program has launched an effort to modernize the computational methods used to score the biological health of organisms living in and on the sediment ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun developing a scientific framework to help managers rapidly assess the health of aquatic ecosystems based on the social and environmental justice benefits they provide ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have kicked off the next phase of an ongoing study investigating if a set of bioassessment scoring tools for evaluating the health of California streams is ... More

SCCWRP and its partners are preparing to lead California in implementing a White House-led national science strategy being released in June that is intended to bring standardization and consistency to ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a causal assessment study in the San Luis Rey River watershed in San Diego County to help managers evaluate the likely vs. unlikely causes ... More

The Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC) has launched an investigation into why some streams that have been modified via channel hardening have healthier biological communities than others – part ... More

SCCWRP has begun exploring how to integrate a suite of newly developed tools for monitoring the health of coastal estuaries into California State Parks’ estuarine monitoring and management programs. During ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun developing a suite of tools to help managers identify the specific stressors that present significant ecological risks to California streams that are in good ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed taxonomic data standards for terrestrial arthropods and bryophytes, paving the way for these organisms to be used as routine bioassessment indicators for tracking the ... More

SCCWRP has begun working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to overhaul and modernize how the federal agency uses modeling tools to assess the ecological condition of aquatic ... More

The Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC) has begun examining how flow alterations affect the biological health of streams that have been modified via channel hardening – part of a ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed field training and intercalibration exercises to support a pair of monitoring initiatives intended to collectively generate comprehensive insights about the ecological health of coastal ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun working to establish a statewide monitoring program for coastal estuaries that is optimally responsive to the needs and priorities of managers. During a workshop ... More

CTAG will host an all-day workshop next month to identify constraints and challenges associated with incorporating environmental DNA (eDNA) methods into aquatic monitoring programs nationwide – the latest in a ... More

A federal task force that includes SCCWRP has reached agreement on the technical and management actions that will need to be taken to support development of a coordinated national strategy ... More

The California Water Quality Monitoring Council and its partners have launched a six-part webinar series to educate managers and other interested parties on how environmental DNA (eDNA) methods can be ... More

SCCWRP has completed development of a set of standardized assessment protocols for assessing the health of eelgrass beds based on their ecological functioning. Development of the eelgrass beds monitoring SOPs ... More

The eelgrass habitat suitability model – described in a SCCWRP technical report published in July – will consist of a mechanistic model for predicting eelgrass growth along Southern California’s coast. ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed a training workshop intended to help managers understand how to appropriately use bioassessment data to protect and restore the health of wadeable streams statewide. ... More

SCCWRP has begun briefing multiple federal and State agencies about plans to evaluate sediment quality near offshore oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel – part of a three-year study ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed a modeling tool for predicting how aquatic life becomes increasingly stressed as levels of chloride, sulfate and other ions rise in freshwater ecosystems – ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have finalized and published a statewide monitoring framework intended to bring consistency to how California assesses the health of its coastal estuaries. The framework, described in ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed an analysis of where levels of chlorine, sodium and other ions in the Santa Ana watershed have been elevated above background concentrations – a ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed development of a species distribution model for assessing the vulnerability of the endangered arroyo toad to future changes in stream flow patterns in the ... More

SCCWRP has begun working to study piles of seafloor debris known as shell mounds that were created during installation of 26 offshore oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel decades ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun developing methods for monitoring Southern California endangered and invasive freshwater species by detecting the DNA they shed into their environment, known as environmental DNA ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed a user-friendly, web-based tool to help managers rapidly evaluate the likely vs. unlikely causes of degraded biological condition in streams in the San Gabriel ... More

More than 300 researchers and environmental managers gathered at SCCWRP and online during a national scientific workshop in September to coordinate and advance strategies for transitioning DNA-based methods for identifying ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a three-year study to measure how rapidly the DNA that marine organisms shed into their environment decays in ocean water under different environmental conditions ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun exploring how to build a multitrophic index tool that integrates three lines of evidence about biological condition in wadeable streams to assess overall ecological ... More

SCCWRP has developed a set of hydrologic models for the San Diego region to support an ongoing study documenting how changes in stream flow patterns in the coming years are ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed development of the beta version of a tool that can rapidly distinguish among perennial, intermittent and ephemeral streams in the U.S. Great Plains region, ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a two-year pilot effort to assess the health of Southern California’s coastal eelgrass beds using a new, bioassessment-based monitoring approach that focuses on evaluating ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have released for public comment a draft science product that is expected to serve as the technical foundation for the State Water Board in developing a ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed a set of tools to help California watershed managers identify watershed restoration and protection projects that are most likely to achieve the greatest improvements ... More

A newly discovered species of algae has been named after former SCCWRP Senior Scientist Dr. A. Elizabeth “Betty” Fetscher in recognition of her decades of contributions to the field of ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun working to build a classification system for distinguishing among different types of modified channels in California – a foundational step toward helping stream managers ... More

The Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC) has completed an in-person field intercalibration exercise for its Regional Watershed Monitoring Program that demonstrated that program participants have been able to maintain ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun developing a modeling tool to help Santa Ana River watershed managers understand the relationship between ion levels in the watershed and how aquatic life ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed a two-year study that has helped reshape understanding of how to manage stream flow patterns in California to optimally protect overall ecological health. The ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed plans to conduct the first regional monitoring survey examining the health of eelgrass beds across coastal Southern California. The two-year monitoring survey, which will ... More

SCCWRP and its partners are wrapping up production of an initial version of a user-friendly, web-based management tool for helping stream managers rapidly narrow down likely causes of poor stream ... More

The Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC) has approved a three-year, SCCWRP-led study to be launched next year that will evaluate multiple potential management options for improving the biological health ... More

SCCWRP has built a partnership with researchers in Mexico to assess the health of coastal estuaries in Baja California next year using a proposed estuarine monitoring framework developed for California. ... More

SCCWRP has been asked to host a national scientific workshop next year focused on helping water-quality managers make use of the DNA that aquatic organisms shed into their environment – ... More

The Southern California Bight Regional Monitoring Program is partnering with three other West Coast marine monitoring groups this summer to produce the most comprehensive picture to date of how ocean ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed a set of standardized methods for collecting field data on the health of California’s coastal estuaries, part of an ongoing effort to develop a ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun developing a user-friendly, web-based tool to help managers rapidly evaluate the likely vs. unlikely causes of degraded biological condition in streams. The web interface ... More

SCCWRP has begun working with the federal Bureau of Land Management in Alaska to build capacity to evaluate the health of waterways using DNA-based tools for conducting routine bioassessment work. ... More

A SCCWRP-developed tool that can help watershed managers determine which streams the federal government has jurisdiction to regulate under the Clean Water Act has been released in beta form for ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun sequencing the DNA of hundreds of stream algae samples in preparation for building a molecular version of the statewide Algal Stream Condition Index scoring ... More

The Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC) has finalized plans for the third cycle of its Regional Watershed Monitoring Program that kicks off this spring. The cyclical program’s workplan – ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a three-year effort to determine the degree to which human modifications to Central Valley watersheds are triggering harmful algal blooms and other eutrophication issues ... More

A statewide workgroup led by SCCWRP that has been working to standardize DNA-based sampling and analysis methods for routine aquatic monitoring applications has released its first set of draft protocols ... More

SCCWRP has unveiled a comprehensive set of resources intended to overcome common end-user challenges associated with analyzing, accessing and interpreting stream bioassessment data – challenges that have stymied more widespread ... More

A new tool that can rapidly distinguish among perennial, intermittent and ephemeral streams in the U.S. Southwest has received preliminary endorsement from a technical steering committee, paving the way for ... More

SCCWRP has launched a three-year effort to explore when and how bioassessment scoring tools should be used to evaluate the health of California streams that have been modified through channel ... More

SCCWRP has developed a three-tiered framework incorporating bioassessment methods to help environmental managers across coastal California comprehensively evaluate the health of eelgrass and other types of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV). ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have shown in a proof-of-concept study that regional stream monitoring programs can be used to track endangered and invasive aquatic species using the environmental DNA – ... More

SCCWRP has developed detailed guidance for California watershed managers on how to identify and work through common factors that can affect the usability of stream bioassessment data, including when it’s ... More

SCCWRP and the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have completed a two-year study examining the ecological health of the area surrounding offshore oil platforms in the Santa Barbara ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have shown in a proof-of-concept study that using DNA methods to conduct algae-based assessments of stream health offers a reliable, cost-effective alternative to traditional biological assessment ... More

SCCWRP and its partners at California State University, Monterey Bay, have shown in a proof-of-concept study that bioassessment tools designed to evaluate the health of ephemeral streams have the potential ... More

SCCWRP has been invited by stormwater managers in the San Francisco Bay Area to participate in a one-year study that will shed light on where managers are more vs. less ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have shown in a proof-of-concept study that DNA sequencing methods have the potential to be incorporated into algae-based assessments of stream condition. During the multi-year study ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun using biological indicator data collected from dry streams across Southern California to refine the design of a set of new tools for assessing ephemeral ... More

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and SCCWRP have completed a three-year project to comprehensively characterize sediment-dwelling infaunal communities that live in the continental slope region of the ... More

The Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC) and SCCWRP have developed a new assessment tool that synthesizes three key lines of evidence about the ecological health of wadeable streams to ... More

An expert scientific panel has endorsed a set of draft science products developed by SCCWRP as a strong technical foundation for crafting a State Water Board policy intended to better ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a one-year study to determine the geographical extent to which ecological condition scores calculated for four modified streams in California may be   extrapolated ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed a statistical modeling tool for conducting causal assessments that could help shave a year or more off the time required to narrow down potential ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a study exploring the spatial extent to which ecological condition scores calculated for sites in engineered and modified channels may be extrapolated to upstream ... More

SCCWRP has been asked to participate in a national study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development evaluating whether low impact development (LID) solutions for improving ... More

A panel of scientific experts has launched a comprehensive review of a suite of technical products co-authored by SCCWRP that are intended to support the State Water Board in developing ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed a statewide scoring tool for quantifying the condition of a stream’s physical habitat, enabling watershed managers for the first time to readily interpret and ... More

The State Water Board has published draft versions of a suite of technical reports, journal manuscripts and tools co-authored by SCCWRP that will serve as the technical foundation for the ... More

The California Water Quality Monitoring Council has formed a statewide workgroup to be led by SCCWRP that will examine how to bring greater consistency and standardization to DNA-based analysis methods ... More

A new set of tools co-developed by SCCWRP to assess the condition of ephemeral streams when they are dry is being transitioned to pilot testing by the end-user management community. ... More

The Smithsonian Institute has partnered with SCCWRP, the Southern California Bight 2018 Regional Monitoring Program and the Western Association of Marine Labs to begin developing a DNA barcoding library that ... More

The technical advisory group for a study examining how ecological stress alters the complexity and interconnectedness of stream food webs has reached agreement on the DNA processing and analysis methods ... More

SCCWRP and its partners in October began developing a management tool for rapidly narrowing down potential causes of degraded ecological condition in California streams and coastal waters, part of an ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have shown in a proof-of-concept study that a flow classification tool that can rapidly distinguish intermittent streams from ephemeral streams in the Pacific Northwest is feasible ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have begun test-driving a novel approach to assessing stream health that has the potential to shave a year or more off the time required to determine ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed a two-year study shedding light on best-practices approaches for analyzing raw DNA sequencing data to identify the organisms present in an environmental sample, the ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a three-year effort to better integrate stream condition assessment tools in California by examining how ecological stress alters the complexity and interconnectedness of stream ... More

The Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC) has released a comprehensive new report chronicling how the region’s stream management community will potentially be impacted by new and proposed changes to ... More

SCCWRP and its partners will begin soliciting public comments this summer on a series of new scientific tools and synthesis reports that will form the technical backbone for a proposed ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a study to investigate whether a stream management tool that can rapidly distinguish intermittent streams from ephemeral streams in the Pacific Northwest is feasible ... More

An assessment tool that will score the ecological health of California wadeable streams by analyzing algal communities is scheduled to be finalized and published as early as this fall. The ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed a web-based interactive mapping program to help stream managers visualize where in the San Gabriel River watershed they are more vs. less likely to ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have initiated a pair of case studies to demonstrate a set of new causal assessment tools designed to rapidly narrow potential causes of degraded ecological condition ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have kicked off a study examining whether bioassessment tools being developed to assess the health of ephemeral streams also can be used to assess ecological damage ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed a pair of studies that establish a technical foundation for building watershed management tools for Southern California streams that run dry for much of ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed a proof-of-concept study showing that DNA sequencing methods can be used to identify communities of ichthyoplankton, or the eggs and larvae of fish, collected ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have developed a preliminary version of a stream assessment tool that can quantitatively score the condition of physical habitat using field data collected during routine monitoring ... More

SCCWRP and its partners are launching a three-year project to develop bioindicators for ephemeral streams in California and Arizona, following the successful completion of a proof-of-concept study showing that these ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed initial development work on an assessment tool that will score the ecological health of California wadeable streams by analyzing the condition of in-stream algal ... More

SCCWRP and its partners are exploring how to expand use of a modeling technique for extrapolating bioassessment results to unmonitored stream reaches, following the completion of a pilot study that ... More

SCCWRP has completed a pilot study examining how long the environmental DNA signal of an organism lingers in a stream following the removal of the source organism, part of an ... More

The Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition in March kicked off Year 3 of field sampling for the second five-year cycle of its regional stream monitoring program. The SMC Regional Watershed ... More

SCCWRP has generated a series of maps that reveal the geographical extent to which ecological condition scores calculated for stream sampling sites may be extrapolated to unsampled reaches upstream and ... More

The Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition has completed a comprehensive analysis of the range of ecological condition scores obtained when engineered channels across coastal Southern California are scored using existing ... More

A 16-member expert panel convened to interpret bioassessment scores for wadeable streams statewide has reached consensus on how the scores correspond to various ranges of ecological condition. The Biological Condition ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed Year 1 of field sampling for a study investigating the feasibility of using terrestrial arthropods, riparian insects and bryophytes (e.g., mosses) to assess the ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have completed Year 1 of field sampling for a study investigating the feasibility of using terrestrial arthropods, riparian insects and bryophytes (e.g., mosses) to assess the ... More

SCCWRP and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife convened an expert panel in September to review how far stream condition scores calculated for a given stream sampling site can ... More

SCCWRP and two of its member agencies completed field sampling in June for a project that will evaluate DNA-based methods for identifying ichthyoplankton, which are the eggs and larvae of ... More

SCCWRP and California State University, Monterey Bay, in June launched a study to investigate the feasibility of using terrestrial arthropods and bryophytes (e.g., mosses) to assess the biological condition of ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a first-of-its-kind study to determine whether DNA-based methods can reliably be used to identify algae in wadeable streams across California, a finding that could ... More

SCCWRP and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in August will launch a study seeking to clarify how far stream condition scores calculated for a single stream site can ... More

SCCWRP has created a free online tool to help Southern California stream managers and scientists automatically generate stream bioassessment scores using raw algae data collected from wadeable streams. The algaeMetrics ... More

SCCWRP hosted a day-long kickoff meeting with state, federal and local agencies in January to begin developing a statewide freshwater bioassessment program that uses algae as the indicator of waterbody ... More

SCCWRP and its partners have launched a series of outreach and training exercises to teach watershed managers how to use a new scoring tool for evaluating the biological health of ... More

A four-member expert review panel tasked with reviewing a science plan supporting the State Water Board’s effort to develop nutrient objectives for California wadeable streams has concluded that SCCWRP’s approach ... More

Two new CTAG user groups that will pool together resources and expertise from SCCWRP’s member agencies to tackle next-generation data acquisition and visualization technology projects met for the first time ... More

The Santa Monica Bay Foundation and its partners, including SCCWRP, have completed a draft guidance document that establishes standard protocols for monitoring and assessing coastal lagoons and intertidal estuaries in ... More

A new scoring tool that was developed to assess the biological condition of California’s wadeable streams has been applied for the first time to all wadeable streams statewide, with the ... More

A five-year monitoring study of Southern California’s perennial wadeable streams has found that 75% of the region’s 4,300 miles of streams are degraded, with no discernable improvements in the health ... More