Biological and contaminant investigations, Upper Colorado River Basin : what's been done and how can the information be used?

The NAWQA program is designed to integrate physical, chemical, and biological components to assess water quality in 60 river basins nationwide. The biological component of this program focuses on 1. Biological communities (algae, macroinvertebrates, and fish); 2. stream habitat characterizations; and 3. trace-element and organic contaminants in aquatic tissues and bed sediment (Gurtz, 1994). Existing biological and contaminant information was inventoried as the first step for implementation of the biological component of the NAWQA program for the UCOL study unit. The inventory of the historical data indicated the types of biological information available for the basin, the gaps in this information, and the implications for water-quality issues. Hydrology, climate, geology, topography, and land use vary substantially within the UCOL study unit and directly affect stream biology in the study unit. Therefore, these natural and human factors (Apodaca and others, 1996) were important in the information inventory.