Macroinvertebrates were sampled at 69 sampling stations located in Carroll County (38 stations), Heard County (17 stations) and Paulding County (14 stations), Georgia. Macroinvertebrates were sampled from multiple habitats (e.g., riffles, leaf packs, woody debris, substrate, root mats, macrophytes, etc.) at each station following standard qualitative techniques of the draft SOPs for the Georgia Bioassessment Protocols (GBP; GADNR 1997). The macroinvertebrate samples were identified to lowest possible taxonmic level and the results were used to compute six community, population and function metrics following the GBP. Assessment scores of 0, 1, 3, or 5 were assigned to each metric based on the degree of deviation from the "expected" metric values for relatively undisturbed reference streams. The summed score for each station was compared to a fixed criteria score and the percentage of that fixed criterion was determined. Based on that percentage, the biotic integrity of each of the stream stations was categorized as very poor (<21%), poor (21-53%), good (54-83%) or very good(>83%).
Keywords: Benthic macroinvertebrates, watershed assessment
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