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• • <br />INTRODUCTION <br />The goal of the Clean Water Act is to preserve and restore the biological <br />integrity of aquatic resources. Monitoring is a tool we use to measure our <br />management successes and failures and base our resource allocation adjustments on <br />to meet this goal. Under the Clean Water Act federal agencies have the <br />responsibility for monitoring water quality on federally managed lands. <br />Aquatic macroinvertebrates are an important component of aquatic ecosystems and <br />have long been used to evaluate water quality. Among all the components of an <br />aquatic ecosystem they are one of the best suited for monitoring and basing <br />resource decisions on because they are numerous in almost all streams and lakes; <br />they respond to changing environmental conditions, either natural or anthropogenic; <br />they are readily collected and identified; they are not very mobile; they have <br />sufficiently long life cycles to enable effects to be integrated over an annual <br />period; and they provide a vital link in the food chain between primary producers <br />(algae and macrophytes) and fish. They have also been shown to be a cost <br />effective monitoring tool for evaluating the effects of management changes on <br />stream and riparian condition. <br />This report provides a general assessment of the aquatic ecosystem based on the <br />aquatic macroinvertebrate community. It was assumed the sampling area was <br />representative of a larger area. The information provided should be integrated <br />with other data collected in the watershed to gain a more complete understanding <br />of pollution sources, impacts, and trends. <br />SAMPLING LOCATIONS <br />The information in this report is based on data collected at the sites listed <br />below. Additional site location and management information for each site is shown <br />in Table 1. <br />Station Name County <br />31- MILE -1 31 Mile Creek <br />CURRANT -1 Currant Creek <br />