A flow-chart for developing water quality criteria from two field-based methods

Abstract

Field-based methods increase relevance and realism when setting water quality criteria. They also pose challenges. To enable a consistent process, a flow chart was developed for choosing between two field-based methods and then selecting among candidate results. The two field-based methods estimated specific conductivity (SC) levels likely to extirpate 5% of benthic invertebrate genera: an extirpation concentration distribution (XCD) method and a background-to-criterion (B-C) model developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The B-C model is a least squares regression of the 5th centile of XCD (XCD05) values against estimates of background SC. Selection of an XCD05 from the flowchart is determined by characteristics of the paired chemical and biological data sets and method for estimating the XCD05 values. Confidence in these example SC XCD05 values is based on the size of the data sets and ecoregional SC disturbance. The level of ecoregional SC disturbance was judged by comparing the background SC (the 25th centile of the data set used to calculate a XCD05) and an estimate of natural base-flow SC modeled from geophysical attributes in the region. The B-C approach appears to be a viable option for estimating a SC benchmark with inexpensive estimates of SC background while the XCD method is used when the data are abundant. To illustrate the use of the flow chart, example SC XCD05 values were calculated for 63 of 86 Level III ecoregions in the conterminous United States of America.