Stressor gradients are an effective method of describing the varying magnitude and nature of the stressors to which freshwater ecosystems are exposed.  But to be useful as a bioassessment tool, the environmental changes that the gradient depicts must correspond to consistent changes in aquatic organisms or communities.  Our study addressed the effectiveness of stressor gradients as a bioassessment tool by answering two important questions:  1. Do changes in aquatic communities correspond with changes in the stressor environment? and 2. What modes of describing the stressor environment best correspond to changes in the aquatic community?  We answered these questions by determining the strength of correspondence between fish community composition and four stressor gradients generated from data of varying detail and spatial explicitness.  Our results demonstrated that there is strong correspondence between changes in the stressor environment and the composition of the fish community, such that as the number and degree of stressors increases the fish community shifts from a small number of sensitive, cold water stenotherms to a community dominated by tolerant, warmwater species.  Based upon our findings we conclude that stressor gradients can be an effective bioassessment tool, particularly when the stressor environment is described in a high degree of detail.