Abstract: As an important part of river health evaluations, habitat assessment has received more and more attention. Practice progresses of foreign river habitat assessment are reviewed and the basic thinking with working procedure of habitat assessment in American Rapid Bioassessment Protocols (RBPs) is introduced in this paper. Then, an empirical study has been carried out on Suzhou Creek in Shanghai. The result indicates that: Suzhou Creek has been strongly affected by human activity, and its habitat quality varies mostly between better to bad levels. Scores of the habitat quality of main streams are close to that of branches, while habitat quality of upstream areas is better than that of lower-middle reaches areas, and rural areas is better than urban areas. Result shows that Rapid Bioassessment Protocols (RBPs) has important referential value to the river habitat assessment in China.

Key words: river habitat assessment, Rapid Bioassessment Protocols, Suzhou Creek, applicability