This volume summarizes the two-year effort of a working group of leading aquatic scientists sponsored by NSF, EPA, NASA, TVA, and NOAA to identify research opportunities and frontiers in freshwater sciences for this decade and beyond. The research agenda outlined focuses on issues of water availability, aquatic ecosystem integrity, and human health and safety. It is a consensus document that has been endorsed by all of the major professional organizations involved with freshwater issues.

Robert J. Naiman received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University in 1974. He is currently the director of the University of Washington's Center for Streamside Studies, which focuses research and education efforts on riparian management in the Pacific Northwest. His own resaerch efforts includes include the ecological dynamics of streams and rivers, the role of large animals in influencing ecosystems and landscape processes, and riparian processes. He is actively involved with UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme and is chair of the US MAB Program's Temporate Ecosystems Directorate.

John J. Magnuson serves as professor of zoology and director of the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and principal investigator of the North Temporate Lakes Long-Term Ecological Research Site. He earned his BSc and his MS from the University of Minnesota in fisheries science and his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research interests are in fish and fisheries ecology, long-term ecological research on lake ecosystems, including climate change effects, and comparative analyses across diverse ecosystems.

Diane M. McKnight received a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from MIT in 1979. Since then she has been a research hydrologist with the US Geological Survey -- Water Resources Division. Her interests are in biogeochemical processes involving trace metals and natural organic material in freshwater ecosystems.

Jack A. Stanford is Jessie M. Bierman Professor of Ecology at the University of Montana and is also director of the Flathead Lake Biological Station. He received his Ph.D. in limnology from the University of Utah in 1975, and has studied lakes and streams throughout the world, and in particular, the Flathead River-Lake ecosystem in Montana and British Columbia.