Biological integrity

Biological integrity is associated with how "pristine" an environment is and its function relative to the potential or original state of an ecosystem before human alterations were imposed.

Biological integrity is built on the assumption that a decline in the values of an ecosystem's functions are primarily caused by human activity or alterations.

[4] The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had used the term as a way to gauge the standards to which water should be maintained, but the vocabulary instigated years of debate about the implications of not only the meaning of biological integrity, but also how it can be measured.

Fish and Wildlife Service, academia, and its own staff to further refine the definition and identify key indicators to quantitatively measure biological integrity.

This term primarily refers to aquatic environments because the vocabulary is derived from the Clean Water Act, but the concepts can be applied to other ecosystems.