Virginia Tech biology researchers have applied tools from geology, geography, and hydrologic modeling to determine the effect of different land uses on stream quality across 10 watersheds of the French Broad River in the North Carolina mountains. The result is a new protocol for determining the health or condition of huge land-water systems. The research has also resulted in a set of tools for predicting the effect of development decisions in the watersheds studied, which are near Ashville, N.C.