Framework Customization
There is no single best way to characterize river health. The optimal approach always depends on the characteristics of the river, the purpose and geographic scope of the assessment, and the information and resources available to carry out the assessment. The advantage of CoRHAF in this context lies in its core organizational structure–a structure that simultaneously promotes thoughtful holistic investigations of river health while maintaining a high degree of extensibility and adaptability to unique local needs. This extensibility and adaptibility is manifest in the ability to adopt, modify, supplement, or reject Drivers and Components and subsequently select uniquely-suited Metrics and Grading Guidelines for the assessing river conditions.
The opportunities for customization of CoRHAF are readily conveyed via the flowchart below. Stakeholder groups and technical teams are confronted with multiple decision points (red diamonds) prior to carrying out assessment activities. These outcomes of these decision lead to deliberative processes (blue boxes) for refining the structure of CoRHAF to include Drivers, Components, and Metrics that are best suited for the local context. Decisions along the flowchart also result in the development of qualitative or quantitative grading guidelines (green boxes) at different levels in the Drivers, Components, and Metrics hierarchy.
Several decision points require selection of the preferred resolution and precision of assessment activities for individual Drivers and/or Components. Stakeholder groups and technical teams may elect to utilize qualitative evaluations where the geographic scale of assessment activities or limitations in available funding or technical expertise make more detailed assessments unrealistic. In other settings, the key questions motivating the assessment may require a more detailed quantitative evaluation of one or more Components. The following section discusses some of the considerations that may inform the process of Driver, Component, and Metric selection. The consequences of these selections on development of customized Grading Guidelines are subsequently presented.
The CoRHAF Workbook includes an example qualitative assessment framework, with a stock set of Drivers, Components, select Metrics, and Grading Guidelines that are widely applicable. Any of these CoRHAF elements may be adopted, modified, supplemented or replaced, but they are intended to provide a substantial head start in the process of CoRHAF customization.
