Abstract: As an important part of river health evaluation, habitat assessment has received more and more attention from scientists, the public, and government agencies. Practice progresses of foreign river habitat assessment are reviewed and 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 is mostly in better to bad level. Scores of habitat quality of main streams are close to scores of branches, while habitat quality of upstream areas is better than lower-middle reaches areas, and that of rural areas is better than urban areas. Result shows that Rapid Bioassessment Protocols (RBPs) has referential value to river habitat assessment in China and can be improved to a river habitat assessment method with local characteristics.

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