The Reference Condition Management Plan (RCMP) is managed by SWAMP which stands for Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program. SWAMP is tasked with assessing water quality in all of California’s surface waters. The program conducts monitoring directly and through collaborative partnerships and provides numerous information products, all designed to support water resource management in California.
The goal of the RCMP is to provide an objective system for defining the expected biological and physical condition of streams and rivers in California. The RCMP identifies reference sites and outlines procedures for sampling the reference sites with the goal of establishing a range of biological expectations for streams in a particular region.
Biological expectations can be defined as the natural or expected population in an undisturbed stream or, the populations of macroinvertebrates that are defined by the reference sites. It is assumed that these biological populations, if intact, help maintain and represent the biological integrity of the system. The macroinvertebrate community found at the reference sites within each region set the benchmark for evaluating the biological integrity of the rest of California’s streams within that particular region.
The problem with reference sites is that there are regions in California where reference sites don’t exist; such as the Central Valley and the highly urbanized areas of Southern California. So, the panel members for the RCMP recognized that they needed to come up with an alternative strategy to define expected conditions of the macroinvertebrate community in these 2 regions.