Aquatic ecosystem assessment is a rapidly developing field, and one of the newer approaches to assessing the condition of rivers and lakes is the Reference Condition Approach. This is a significant advancement in biomonitoring because it solves the problem of trying to locate nearby control or reference sites when studying an ecosystem that may be degraded, a problem that bedevils traditional approaches. Rather than using upstream reference sites in a river system or next-bay-over reference sites in a lake, an array of ecologically similar, least-exposed to stress sites scattered throughout a catchment or region is used. Once the reference condition has been established, any site suspected of being impacted can be assessed by comparison to the reference sites, and its status determined. The Reference Condition database, once formed, can be used repeatedly.

Aquatic ecosystem assessment is a rapidly developing field, and one of the newer approaches to assessing the condition of rivers and lakes is the Reference Condition Approach. This is a significant advancement in biomonitoring because it solves the problem of trying to locate nearby control or reference sites when studying an ecosystem that may be degraded, a problem that bedevils traditional approaches. Rather than using upstream reference sites in a river system or next-bay-over reference sites in a lake, an array of ecologically similar, least-exposed to stress sites scattered throughout a catchment or region is used. Once the reference condition has been established, any site suspected of being impacted can be assessed by comparison to the reference sites, and its status determined. The Reference Condition database, once formed, can be used repeatedly.
The Reference Condition is established by standardized sampling of both the biota and its environment at a number of reference sites. A variety of environmental variables is measured in conjunction with sampling the biota (usually benthic invertebrates). In this book, we describe the basic methods involved in selecting and sampling appropriate reference sites, comparing test sites to appropriate reference sites using predictive modeling, and determining whether or not test sites are in the reference condition. This provides a rapid assessment method that can deal with everything from large-scale, national issues to local-scale problems with the same approach, and often parts of the same database.

Since the late 1960s the burgeoning gay rights movement has begun to have a profound effect on the politics of many American cities. More than 135 cities and counties have passed local ordinances that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and openly gay city council members and other public officials have been elected in urban areas from Melbourne, Iowa, to Dallas, Texas. These are major triumphs, many would argue, for an identity movement that has been an active presence on America's political horizon for only several decades. In "Gay Politics, Urban Politics," Robert W. Bailey presents the most comprehensive exploration to date of gay and lesbian politics in urban settings. Drawing from surveys of political attitudes and voting patterns among gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, Bailey's study is a revealing window into how sexual identity has fostered political alliances. The book investigates mayoral voting patterns in America's three largest cities--New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago--and presents four in-depth case studies of specific urban political settings: Birmingham, Alabama; New York City; Philadelphia; and San Francisco. Bailey addresses such issues as how policy is swayed in cities not known as gay centers and how specific issues are influenced in urban areas where gays and lesbians become part of the governing regime. Bringing together identity, queer, and social organization theories, this book offers a rich addition to the literature of political science and urban affairs, fields that call for a much closer relationship with lesbian and gay studies. In a broader sense, it seeks to reinvigorate the social science approach to the study of urbanpolitical phenomena.