John R. Copeland, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, Draper Aden Building, 2206 S. Main Street, Suite C, Blacksburg, Va 24060-6620.

Karle Woodward, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, HC 6, Box 46, Farmville, VA 23901

In 1997, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland fisheries began a statewide headwater stream sampling program. While the project allows us to exercise our curiosity for "what lies beneath the surface", the primary goal is to develop and maintain a fisheries database and classification system for our headwater streams and use it to direct restoration, management, and habitat protection efforts. Project objectives include: (1) identifying streams that do or could support sustainable fisheries through restoration and/or management efforts; (2) developing a long-term monitoring plan to evaluate changes in fish communities related to large-scale anthropogenic impacts; and (3) determining the distribution of threatened and endangered species in relation to drainage basin, habitat, and fish community attributes. Project protocols are borrowed from existing fish and habitat sampling programs like those of the U.S. Geological Survey and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. In 1977, survey areas were delineated by using U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service watersheds. In 1998, we plan to survey larger geographic areas by sampling within U.S. Geological Survey hydrologic units or biologically similar "regions" resulting from overlaying drainage and physiography. Collaborative work is being conducted with Dr. Paul Angermeier at Virginia Tech to develop models for determining optimum sampling regimes within geographic areas and for predicting species presence or absence in unsampled locations. The presence and absence models may provide a basis for us to prognosticate on stream reaches where restoration, management, and habitat protection efforts could be directed.