ABSTRACT
Integrative assessments are defined as investigations involving attempts to integrate measures of environmental quality to make an overall assessment of the status of the system. The measures can include two or more of the following components: sediment toxicity tests, sediment chemical analyses, tissue chemical analyses, pathological studies, and community structure studies. The purpose of such investigations is to determine environmental quality; such may be defined in terms of relative and/or current status, but particularly relates to ecosystem health. Integrative assessments are conducted because we generally do not have adequate knowledge of cause and effect to determine environmental quality. Ideally, integrative assessments should emphasize a holistic (top-down) approach, using reductionist (bottom-up) approaches to assist in elucidating reasons. In science, questions of significance generally revolve around statistics. Information on the responses of ecosystems to stress has increased greatly in the last few decades, although this has not necessarily resulted in greater understanding of causality.
