Regional frameworks enable bioassessment methods to detect anthropogenic effects on ecosystems amid natural variability. Conventional approaches to regionalization have used coarse geographical frameworks to separate sites similar in their ecological (ecoregion) or faunal (basin) characteristics. Expectations for individual streams are then adjusted for within-region variability in local environmental characteristics. Integrating regional frameworks and local variability may improve the sensitivity and performance of bioassessments. In this study, we used a biologically-informed stream classification to develop an integrated regional framework for bioassessment considering the effects of ecoregion, basin, and local environmental variables on wadeable stream fish communities of South Carolina, USA. Our integrated framework was compared against conventional regional frameworks indexing ecoregions or basins alone. Frameworks were evaluated by their ability to (1) efficiently partition community variation and (2) allow for the detection of anthropogenic effects on fish communities. We found an integrated framework better described natural variability in stream fish communities. In addition, we found highly regional relationships between fish metrics and anthropogenic disturbance among frameworks, suggesting appropriate bioassessment metrics will differ across regions in our study area. Differences in community response to disturbance among frameworks emphasize the importance of testing metrics for their hypothesized sensitivity before using them in bioassessment. This study ultimately supports the integration of regional frameworks across spatial scales to classify streams for bioassessment, and provides an analytical framework from which to evaluate biotic variation and metric utility in the context of bioassessment.

区域框架使生物评估方法能够发现自然变异性对生态系统的人为影响。传统的区域化方法是使用粗略的地理框架来分离生态（生态区域）或动物（盆地）特征相似的地点。然后根据当地环境特征的区域内变化来调整对单个流的期望。整合区域框架和局部可变性可以提高生物评估的敏感性和绩效。在这项研究中，我们使用了生物信息流分类技术来开发一个综合的区域性生物评估框架，其中考虑了生态区，流域和当地环境变量对美国南卡罗来纳州可游河鱼类群落的影响。我们的综合框架与仅索引生态区域或流域的常规区域框架进行了比较。评估框架的能力是：（1）有效划分群落变异的能力；（2）能够检测出对鱼类群落的人为影响。我们发现一个集成的框架可以更好地描述溪流鱼类群落中的自然变异性。此外，我们发现鱼类指标与框架之间的人为干扰之间存在高度的区域关系，这表明我们研究区域内不同地区的适当生物评估指标会有所不同。框架对社区对干扰的反应的差异强调了在将其用于生物评估之前测试其假设敏感性的指标的重要性。