Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures, Tables, and Boxes -- Acknowledgments -- Life in Running Waters -- Section I: Aquatic Resources Are Still Declining -- Premise I: Water resources are losing their living components -- Premise 2: "Clean water" is not enough -- Premise 3: Biological monitoring is essential to protect biological resources -- Premise 4: "Health" and "integrity" are meaningful for environmental management -- Section II: Changing Waters and Changing Views Led to Biological Monitoring -- Premise 5: Changing waters and a changing society call for better assessment -- Premise 6: Biological monitoring detects biological changes caused by humans -- Premise 7: Ecological risk assessment and risk management depend on biological monitoring -- Section III: Multimetric Indexes Convey Biological Information -- Premise 8: Understanding biological -- Premise 9: Only a few biological attributes provide reliable signals about biological condition -- Premise 10: Graphs reveal biological responses to human influence -- Premise 11: Similar biological attributes are reliable indicators in diverse circumstances -- Premise 12: Tracking complex systems requires a measure that integrates multiple factors -- Premise 13: Multimetric biological indexes incorporate levels from individuals to landscapes -- Premise 14: Metrics are selected to yield relevant biological information at reasonable cost -- Premise 15: Multimetric indexes are built from proven metrics and a scoring system -- Premise 16: The statistical properties of multimetric indexes are known -- Premise 17: Multimetric indexes reflect biological responses to human activities -- Premise 18: How biology and statistics are used is more important than taxon -- Premise 19: Sampling protocols are well defined for fishes and invertebrates.

Premise 20: The precision of sampling protocols can be estimated by evaluating the components of variance -- Premise 21: Multimetric indexes are biologically meaningful -- Premise 22: Multimetric protocols can work in environments other than streams -- Section IV: For a Robust Multimetric Index, Avoid Common Pitfalls -- Premise 23: Properly classifying sites is key -- Premise 24: Avoid focusing primarily on species -- Premise 25: Measuring the wrong things sidetracks biological monitoring -- Premise 26: Field work is more valuable than geographic information systems -- Premise 27: Sampling everything is not the goal -- Premise 28: Putting probability-based sampling before defining metrics is a mistake -- Premise 29: Counting 100-individual subsamples yields too few date for multimetric assessment -- Premise 30: Avoid thinking in regulatory dichotomies -- Premise 31: Reference condition must be defined properly -- Premise 32: Statistical decision rules are no substitute for biological judgment -- Premise 33: Multivariate statistical analyses often overlook biological knowledge -- Premise 34: Assessing habitat cannot replace assessing the biota -- Section V: Many Criticisms of Multimetric Indexes Are Myths -- Myth I: "Biology is to variable to monitor" -- Myth 2: "Biological assessment is circular" -- Myth 3: "We can't prove that humans degrade living systems without knowing the mechanism" -- Myth 4: "Indexes combine and thus lose information" -- Myth 5: "Multimetric indexes aren't effective because their statistical properties are uncertain" -- Myth 6: "A nontrivial effort is required to calibrate the index regionally" -- Myth 7: "The sensitivity of multimetric indexes is unknown" -- Section VI: The Future Is Now -- Premise 35: We can and must translate biological condition into regulatory standards.

Premise 36: Citizens are changing their thinking faster than bureaucracies -- Premise 37: Can we afford healthy waters? We can afford nothing less -- References -- Index -- About the Authors.