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Objective 8. <br />A final report has been prepared. <br />RECOMMENDATIONS <br />Our future research on this project includes six aspects. First, work is in progress to provide a <br />statistical description of fish faunal change from the probable historic native fauna at each of our <br />sample sites to faunal composition in contemporary samples. Preliminary results suggest that <br />multivariate principal components may describe effectively the fish faunal change specific to <br />drainages and reaches within drainages. Second, we intend to analyze contemporary fish <br />distributions with respect to a large suite of environmental variables. Third, we have benthic - <br />macroinvertebrate samples identified to family and subfamily levels from which we will deduce <br />benthic macroinvertebrate faunal regions and compare them with our aquatic ecoregions and our <br />fish faunal regions. Fourth, we will examine chironomid midge data identified to species level to <br />deduce chironomid faunal regions. <br />The fifth segment of our future research will be devoted to development of IBI's that will <br />emphasize identification 'of sites with impaired habitat. We anticipate that these IBI's will <br />involve a combination of water and habitat quality measures and multiple aspects of the fish and <br />benthic macroinvertebrate biota For the final segment of the project, we intend to carry out <br />sampling at new sites so that the efficacy of the IBI's can be validated. <br />Ci