Stein E.D. , A.E. Fetscher, R.P. Clark, A. Wiskind, J.L. Grenier, M. Sutula, J.N. Collins, C. Grosso. Wetlands 29(2):648-665. 2009
A case study of the validation of the riverine and estuarine modules CRAM. This work evaluated responsiveness of the method to “good” vs. “poor” wetland condition, ability to represent a range of conditions, internal redundancy, alternative combination rules for constituent metrics, and reproducibility of results. The use of existing avian diversity, benthic macroinvertebrate indices, and plant community composition datasets as validation of CRAM results demonstrated. Results indicate that CRAM is an effective tool for assessing general riverine and estuarine wetland condition based on its correspondence with multiple independent assessments of condition. This study demonstrates that, when validated, rapid assessment methods provide a meaningful and reliable tool for assessing wetland condition.