ABSTRACT
CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 365 Methods.................................................................................................................................................. 367
Watershed Selection ..................................................................................................................... 367 Guild Development ...................................................................................................................... 367 Metric Selection ........................................................................................................................... 367 Data Sources and Field Sampling................................................................................................ 368 Metric Analyses............................................................................................................................ 370 Habitat Assessment ...................................................................................................................... 370 Fish Community Indices and Habitat Measures ......................................................................... 371
Results .................................................................................................................................................... 371 Discussion .............................................................................................................................................. 374 Acknowledgments.................................................................................................................................. 377 References .............................................................................................................................................. 378
As human populations and coastal development increase, pressures on aquatic resources multiply. Maintaining the desired benefits derived from aquatic systems requires informed management of anthropogenic impacts. Given that coastal systems are exceptionally complex, few individuals or agencies have the resources to undertake comprehensive analysis of every potential impact. Efficiency in decision making requires distillation of complex interactions and data into a few information-rich metrics that can provide guidance to those with management authority. The effort to generate these metrics is embodied in much of the ongoing research on environmental indicators.
