James R Karr

University of Washington Seattle | UW · School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Twenty USA states or jurisdictions and 125 nations have modeled national environmental policies after the National Environmental Policy Act. That act mandates that federal agencies initiate environmental impact statements (EISs) when substantive environmental or human health consequences are likely because of an agency action related to proposed de...

Multimetric indices (MMIs) are used worldwide to assess the ecological conditions of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Different criteria and approaches are used to construct MMIs, resulting in widely different indices. Therefore, scientists, managers, and policymakers sometimes question whether such MMIs are useful for biomonitoring and bioasses...

Increasingly, scientists and non-scientists, especially employees of government agencies, tend to use weak or equivocal language when making statements related to science policy and governmental regulation. We use recent publications to provide examples of vague language versus examples of strong language when authors write about regulating anthrop...

Significance We leveraged a 44-y population study of Neotropical understory birds from a protected forest reserve in central Panama to document widespread and severe declines in bird abundance. Our findings provide evidence that tropical bird populations may be undergoing systematic declines, even in relatively intact forests. The implications of t...

Ecological integrity has been criticized as a “bad fit as a value” for conservation biology and restoration ecology. But work over the past four decades centered on ecological integrity—especially biological integrity—has given rise to effective methods for biological monitoring and assessment to better understand the disintegration of living syste...

This vignette defines biological integrity and ecological health; links health, integrity, and human activity; describes a commonly used method to assess biological condition; applies biological monitoring and assessment principles to measure the condition of individual rivers; examine the causes of degradation in those rivers; and demonstrates the...

Evaluate Washington's Water Quality Criteria Effectiveness

Environments on Earth are always changing, and living systems evolve within them. For most of their history, human beings did the same. But in the last two centuries, humans have become the planet’s dominant species, changing and often degrading Earth’s environments and living system, including human cultures, in unprecedented ways. Contemporary wo...

The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) shifted federal lands management from a focus on timber production to ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation. The plan established a network of conservation reserves and an ecosystem management strategy on ~10 million hectares from northern California to Washington State, USA, within the range of th...

Twenty years have elapsed since a major science synthesis and planning effort led to adoption of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy (ACS) of the Northwest Forest Plan (NFP) in 1994. Their purpose was to protect and restore riparian and aquatic ecosystems on Pacific Northwest federal forest lands and to ensure that forest management plans achieved le...

Svejcar et al. (Environ Manage, 2014) offered several perspectives regarding Beschta et al. (Environ Manage 51:474-491, 2013)-a publication that addressed the interacting ecological effects of climate change and domestic, wild, and feral ungulates on public lands in the western United States (US)-by largely focusing on three livestock grazing issue...

Environments on Earth are always changing, and living systems evolve within them. For most of their history, human beings did the same. But in the last two centuries, humans have become the planet's dominant species, changing and impoverishing the environment for all life on Earth and even decimating humans' own cultural diversity. Contemporary cul...

Climate change affects public land ecosystems and services throughout the American West and these effects are projected to intensify. Even if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, adaptation strategies for public lands are needed to reduce anthropogenic stressors of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and to help native species and ecosystems surviv...

We explored patterns of small pelagic fish assemblages and biomass of gelatinous zooplankton (jellyfish) in surface waters across four oceanographic subbasins of greater Puget Sound. Our study is the first to collect data documenting biomass of small pelagic fishes and jellyfish throughout Puget Sound; sampling was conducted opportunistically as pa...

This study focuses on the use by juvenile Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha of the rarely studied neritic environment (surface waters overlaying the sublittoral zone) in greater Puget Sound. Juvenile Chinook salmon inhabit the sound from their late estuarine residence and early marine transition to their first year at sea. We measured the den...

The recently proposed index of biotic integrity (IBI) was evaluated for several watersheds throughout the midwestern United States. Five of the community metrics comprising the IBI depend on the number of fish species present and must be adjusted for changes in expected species richness with stream size or zoogeography. We use basic relationships o...

Based on literature review related to the Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI), a life-long dedicated to biological monitoring by Dr. James Karr, and a binational (Mexico-US workshop) held in 2009, this report presents perspectives and actions needed to develop a common approach to a joint program to evaluate and monitor biotic integrity on both sides o...

The letter of R. E. Dodge et al. , “A call to action for coral reefs” (10 October, p. [189][1]), lists actions needed to reverse the decline of coral reefs. Although a primary management tool in nearshore environments, marine protected areas (MPAs) are not designed to protect coral reefs from

Summary When rigorous standards of collecting and analysing data are maintained, biological monitoring adds valuable information to water resource assessments. Decisions, from study design and field methods to laboratory procedures and data analysis, affect assessment quality. Subsampling - a laboratory procedure in which researchers count and iden...

Water quality was monitored for 17 months during base flow periods in six agricultural watersheds to evaluate the impact of riparian vegetation on suspended solids and nutrient concentrations. In areas without riparian vegetation, both instream algal production and seasonal low flows appeared to be major determinants of suspended solids, turbidity,...

Recent controversy concerning post-fire logging in Oregon is emblematic of the problems of “salvage logging” globally ([1][1]). Although tree regeneration after disturbances in forested areas is important ([2][2]–[4][3]), a narrow view of this issue ignores important ecological lessons,

The National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 includes the nation's broadest statutory commitment to ecosystem protection: to “ensure that the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the system are maintained.” The act also directs the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to expand the scope of conservation monitori...

Throughout its century-long history, the National Wildlife Refuge System has been dedicated to the protection of living systems. For many refuges, management emphasis involved a subset of nature such as migratory waterfowl. Passage of the 1997 National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act defined a new mission but framed it with elusive terms suc...

Pressure on nature from the impact of 6 billion humans is taking its toll. Living systems in water bodies illustrate this toll much as blood-cell counts and blood chemistry illustrate the health of a human body. For most of the twentieth century, society remained largely unaware of the collapse of aquatic ecosystems because we saw water narrowly, a...

Recent changes in the forest policies, regulations, and laws affecting public lands encourage postfire salvage logging, an activity that all too often delays or prevents recovery. In contrast, the 10 recommendations proposed here can improve the condition of watersheds and aquatic ecosystems. Keywords: aquatic ecosystems, postfire salvage logging,...

Successful stream rehabilitation requires a shift from narrow analysis and management to integrated understanding of the links between human actions and changing river health. At study sites in the Puget Sound lowlands of western Washington State, landscape, hydrological, and biological conditions were evaluated for streams flowing through watershe...

Forest ecosystems in the western United States evolved over many millennia in response to disturbances such as wildfires. Land use and management practices have altered these ecosystems, however, including fire regimes in some areas. Forest ecosystems are especially vulnerable to postfire management practices because such practices may influence fo...

Mandated TMDL analyses present an excellent opportunity to restore the nation's degraded waters. The current norm for TMDL practice is, however, unlikely to achieve this goal without improved water quality standards plus systematic monitoring and assessment using biological criteria. Better than chemical and physical criteria alone, biological crit...

Mandated total maximum daily load (TMDL) analyses present an excellent opportunity to restore the nation's degraded waters. The current norm for TMDL practice is, however, unlikely to achieve this goal without improved water quality standards plus systematic monitoring and assessment using biological criteria. Better than chemical and physical crit...

A robust approach to defining, understanding, and tracking contaminant levels is crucial to human and ecological risk evaluation and risk management. Whether materials are present in the environment naturally (mercury, radon, nitrogen, phosphorous) and enhanced by human activities or are man-made (DDT and PCBs), the complexity of contaminant distri...

A robust approach to defining, understanding, and tracking contaminant levels is crucial to human and ecological risk evaluation and risk management. Whether materials are present in the environment naturally (mercury, radon, nitrogen, phosphorous) and enhanced by human activities or are man-made (DDT and PCBs), the complexity of contaminant distri...

Threatened Puget Sound chinook salmon and other imperiled anadromous and freshwater species continue to decline in Washington State due to the effects of diverse human actions. Recently, the Washington State Department of Ecology ("DOE") submitted revised water quality standards to the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") for federal approval. D...

We studied arthropods in shrub-steppe at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory to identify scientifically sound indicators of ecological condition and to develop a terrestrial index of biological integrity (T-IBI), an analog of the multimetric indexes used to manage water resources. We sampled terrestrial arthropods with pitfa...

More than 50 years of research, development, manufacture, and testing of nuclear weapons at Department of Energy (DOE) sites has left a legacy of on-site contamination that often spreads to surrounding areas. Despite substantial cleanup budgets in the last decade, the DOE's top-to-bottom review team concluded that relatively little actual cleanup h...

Physical, hydrological, social, and biological conditions were evaluated at 45 stream sites in the Puget Lowland of western Washington, with watersheds ranging in area between 5 and 69 km2 and having urban development as their dominant human activity. Using the benthic index of biotic integrity (B-IBI) as our biological indicator, we found a progre...

Rapid urbanization threatens the biota of streams and rivers around the globe. Efforts to manage urban streams traditionally take an engineering approach focused on stormwater runoff, physical channel condition, and chemical water quality. Our objective was to use the biology of streams—measured with the multimetric benthic index of biological inte...

Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington is an ideal place to study biological responses to diverse human activities because minimally disturbed areas of native shrub–steppe exist in close proximity to areas that have been substantially altered. This range of conditions provides an opportunity to test which attributes of terrestrial invert...

The non-diagnostic nature of most coral reef monitoring programs limits the ability of scientists, managers, and agency staff to communicate trends in the condition of coral reef systems to the public or politicians. Moreover, monitoring programs have neither been designed to identify the specific causes of coral reef decline nor to formulate or ev...

Revealing, and indeed exacerbating, the globe's present water crisis is the failing ecological health of rivers. Those who would protect and restore river health can learn important lessons from humanity's continual fight against disease. We discuss four of these lessons, including their applicability to river issues: (1) recognize and respond to c...

Rivers cannot continue to meet society's needs, or the needs of living things, if humans continue to regard river management as a purely political or engineering challenge. The flow of rivers is part of a greater flow, the planet's water cycle, which sustains not only the flow of water but the entire web of life. Ultimately, the condition, or healt...

Rivers cannot continue to meet society's needs, or the needs of living things, if humans continue to regard river management as a purely political or engineering challenge. The flow of rivers is part of a greater flow, the planet's water cycle, which sustains not only the flow of water but the entire web of life. Ultimately, the condition, or healt...

1. Society benefits immeasurably from rivers. Yet over the past century, humans have changed rivers dramatically, threatening river health. As a result, societal well-being is also threatened because goods and services critical to human society are being depleted. 2. ‘Health’— shorthand for good condition (e.g. healthy economy, healthy communities)...

Evaluating landscape change requires the integration of the social and natural sciences. The social sciences contribute to articulating societal values that govern landscape change, while the natural sciences contribute to understanding the biophysical processes that are influenced by human activity and result in ecological change. Building upon Al...

SUMMARY • Humans alter the surface of Earth in ways, on scales, and at frequencies unprecedented in recent history. Resource and environmental managers must identify and minimize the effects of changes with negative consequence for human society. • Because rivers integrate all that happens in their landscapes, their condition, especially their biol...

2 "Risk-based decision making" has become an often-heard buzzword in Congress and government agency circles. The idea implies that policies based on scientific risk assessment—of human health or ecological risks—will be realistic, fair, and cost effective. But for policies developed through risk-based decision making to fulfill this promise, the fo...

umans have long been fasci- nated by the dynamism of free-flowing waters. Yet we have expended great effort to tame i rivers for transportation, water sup- ply, flood control, agriculture, and ; f

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The goal of biological monitoring is to evaluate the effect of human activities on biological resources. Ln this Study, ive linked human activities across landscapes to specific changes in assemblages of benthic macroinvertebrates in streams that drain those landscapes. We used data from 2nd- to 4th-order streams in southwestern Oregon to test appr...

The goal of this document is to help states develop and use biocriteria for streams and small rivers. The document includes a general strategy for biocriteria development, identifies steps in the process, and provides technical guidance on how to complete each step, using the experience and knowledge of existing state, regional, and national surfac...

Reservoirs comprise an expanding proportion of global freshwater resources. New multimetric approaches to biological monitoring, such as the index of biological integrity, have been useful in streams; similar approaches in reservoirs might aid managers concerned about the reservoirs they manage. Electrofishing data from Tennessee Valley Authority r...

Recently, the laws and regulations that govern water quality and endangered aquatic ecosystems have begun being evaluated in light of increased demands on use of fresh water. Naiman et al. point out that much of the research aimed at evaluating this important resource is in need of improvement and coordination.

Guidelines for submitting commentsPolicy: Comments that contribute to the discussion of the article will be posted within approximately three business days. We do not accept anonymous comments. Please include your email address; the address will not be displayed in the posted comment. Cell Press Editors will screen the comments to ensure that they...

This paper offers a scientific framework of principles and practices that are provided to guide development of federal policy concerning wildfire and salvage logging and other post-fire treatments. A common thread throughout the recommendations is that most native species are adapted to natural patterns and processes of disturbance and recovery in...

Comparative demographic studies of terrestrial vertebrates have included few samples of species from tropical forests. We analyzed 9 yr of mark-recapture data and estimated demographic parameters for 25 species of birds inhabiting lowland forests in. central Panama. These species were all songbirds (Order Passeriformes) ranging in mass from 7 to 57...

Among organisms that inhabit Earth, the human species is unique for three reasons. First, our population size and the extent of our geographic distribution gives us an impact that is unprecendented in the history of life on Earth. Five times in the last 600 million years, cataclysmic events, driven by major geological or astronomical forces such as...

Limited supplies of water increasingly rivals religion, nationalism and defense of land as the catalyst for international conflicts. Law can be a mediating mechanism, but in the western US neither the prior appropriation doctrine nor the Clean Water Act is very effective at protecting today's society against conflicts over water. To improve water l...