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Published in Frank R. Spellman, Fundamentals of Wastewater-Based Epidemiology, 2021
Benthic macroinvertebrates are the larger organisms such as aquatic insects, insect larvae, and crustaceans that live in the bottom portions of a waterway for part of their life cycle. They are ideal for use in biomonitoring, as they are ubiquitous, relatively sedentary, and long-lived. They provide a cross-section of the situation, as some species are extremely sensitive to pollution, while others are more tolerant. However, like toxicity testing, biomonitoring does not tell you why animals are present or absent. As mentioned, benthic macroinvertebrates are excellent indicators for several reasons: Biological communities reflect overall ecological integrity (i.e., chemical, physical, and biological integrity). Therefore, biosurvey results directly assess the status of a waterbody relative to the primary goal of the Clean Water Act (CWA).Biological communities integrate the effects of different stressors and thus provide a broad measure of their aggregate impact.Because they are ubiquitous, communities integrate the stressors over time and provide an ecological measure of fluctuating environmental conditions.Routine monitoring of biological communities can be relatively inexpensive because they are easy to collect and identify.The status of biological communities is of direct interest to the public as a measure of a particular environment.Where criteria for specific ambient impacts do not exist (e.g., nonpoint sources that degrade habitats), biological communities may be the only practical means of evaluation.
Biomonitoring, Monitoring, Sampling, and Testing
Published in Frank R. Spellman, Handbook of Water and Wastewater Treatment Plant Operations, 2020
As discussed earlier, benthic macroinvertebrates are the larger organisms such as aquatic insects, insect larvae, and crustaceans that live in the bottom portions of a waterway for part of their life cycle. They are ideal for use in biomonitoring, as they are ubiquitous, relatively sedentary, and long-lived. They provide a cross-section of the situation, as some species are extremely sensitive to pollution, while others are more tolerant. However, like toxicity testing, biomonitoring does not tell you why animals are present or absent. As mentioned, benthic macroinvertebrates are excellent indicators for several reasons: Biological communities reflect overall ecological integrity (i.e., chemical, physical, and biological integrity). Therefore, biosurvey results directly assess the status of a waterbody relative to the primary goal of the Clean Water Act (CWA).Biological communities integrate the effects of different stressors and thus provide a broad measure of their aggregate impact.Because they are ubiquitous, communities integrate the stressors over time and provide an ecological measure of fluctuating environmental conditions.Routine monitoring of biological communities can be relatively inexpensive, because they are easy to collect and identify.The status of biological communities is of direct interest to the public as a measure of a particular environment.Where criteria for specific ambient impacts do not exist (e.g., nonpoint-sources that degrade habitats), biological communities may be the only practical means of evaluation.
Environmental Biomonitoring, Sampling, and Testing
Published in Frank R. Spellman, The Science of Water, 2020
Biological monitoring involves the use of organisms to assess the environmental condition. Biological observation is more representative as it reveals cumulative effects as opposed to chemical observation, which is representative only at the actual time of sampling. The presence of benthic macroinvertebrates (bottom-dwelling fauna) is monitored; as mentioned, these are the larger-than-microscopic organisms such as aquatic insects, insect larvae, and crustaceans, which are generally ubiquitous in freshwater and live in the bottom portions of a waterway for part of their life cycle. They are ideal for use in biomonitoring because, as mentioned, they are ubiquitous, relatively sedentary, and long-lived. The overall community is holistically reflective of conditions in its environment. They provide a cross section of the situation, as some species are extremely sensitive to pollution, while others are more tolerant. However, like toxicity testing, biomonitoring does not tell you why animals are present or absent. As mentioned, benthic macroinvertebrates are excellent indicators for several reasons: Biological communities reflect overall ecological integrity (i.e., chemical, physical, and biological integrity). Therefore, biosurvey results directly assess the status of a water body relative to the primary goal of the Clean Water Act (CWA).Biological communities integrate the effects of different stressors and thus provide a broad measure of their aggregate impact.Because they are ubiquitous, communities integrate the stressors over time and provide an ecological measure of fluctuating environmental conditions.Routine monitoring of biological communities can be relatively inexpensive, because they are easy to collect and identify.The status of biological comminutes is of direct interest to the public as a measure of a particular environment.Where criteria for specific ambient impacts do not exist (e.g., non-point sources that degrade habitats), biological communities may be the only practical means of evaluation.They can be used to assess nonchemical impacts on the aquatic habitat, such as by thermal pollution, excessive sediment loading (siltation), or eutrophication.
Assessing hydrological alterations in Malibamatso River using River Flow Health Index
Published in ISH Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 2023
While human control of streams has given numerous advantages, river regulation alters natural flow patterns, which harms biodiversity and reduces the value of river ecosystem services (Bunn and Arthington 2002; Poff 2009). Natural flow regimes are critical for supporting the ecosystem and biological integrity of river channels because they drive the establishment of various habitats and impact biotic species’ distribution, richness, and variety (Poff et al. 1997). Natural hydrologic regimes have been significantly affected around the globe because of human activities, including dam construction for agriculture, water supply, navigation, flood control, power production, and recreation. Dams affect the natural hydrologic processes of river channels upstream and downstream by altering flow regime components such as magnitude, variability, duration, frequency, timing, and rate of change (Henriksen et al. 2006). The most direct impact of dam impoundment is the abiotic effect on water quantity (Magilligan and Nislow 2005) and sediment load (Kondolf 1997).
Effects of forested buffers on benthic macroinvertebrate indicators of water quality in the Western Finger Lakes, New York
Published in Inland Waters, 2021
Mitchell C. Owens, Clayton J. Williams, James M. Haynes
Benthic macroinvertebrate communities are frequently used to assess water quality conditions and the biological integrity of aquatic systems, typically through biotic indices such as the Biological Assessment Profile (BAP; Barbour et al. 1999, NYDEC 2014). A BAP is a collection of individual metrics that provide various interpretations of the biological health of a system that are standardized and combined to create an easily comparable measure of a system’s overall health. Macroinvertebrates can be used as the basis of a BAP because of their intermediate status in the food chain, ability to demonstrate both short- and long-term stressors in a community, high diversity and abundance, and species-specific tolerances to disturbances (Allan et al. 1997, Barbour et al. 1999, NYDEC 2014). These types of traits can be measured and quantified using common BAP metrics such as Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera (EPT) richness; non-chironomidae and oligochaeta richness; Hilsenhoff’s biotic index; and nutrient biotic indices (Barbour et al. 1999, NYSDEC 2014). Additionally, anthropogenic stresses, such as shoreline development, have been shown to decrease biodiversity, thereby homogenizing aquatic communities (Gutiérrez-Cánovas et al. 2013, McGoff et al. 2013). These kinds of general anthropogenic impacts can also be measured through BAPs using common metrics such as species richness, species diversity, dominance, and percent model affinity (Barbour et al. 1999, NYSDEC 2014).
Efficiency of a locally designed pilot-scale trickling biofilter (TBF) system in natural environment for the treatment of domestic wastewater
Published in Environmental Technology, 2018
Tabassum Rasool, Abdul Rehman, Iffat Naz, Rahat Ullah, Safia Ahmed
In the developing economies, the construction of reliable, simple and cost-effective decentralized treatment systems is required for wastewater treatment [5]. During recent years, a considerable interest has been expressed in the potential use of a variety of small-scale decentralized natural biological systems to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the natural water bodies in order to prevent water-borne diseases, eutrophication of water bodies and deteriorating fresh water quality. The operational experience and research results reported in the available literature recommended the usefulness of attached growth process for wastewater treatment [6,7]. Attached growth biological system includes rotating biological contactors, fluidized bed biofilm reactors, membrane immobilized reactors, high-rate plastic media filters, airlift reactors and trickling biofilter (TBF) systems [7,8]. Among all these, TBFs are supposed to be the most effective for wastewater treatment because of simple design, easy to construct, low space and energy requirements, and have less operational and maintenance cost [9]. Moreover, various research groups have been involved in the construction and evaluation of the performance of modified and hybrid TBF systems like vertical and horizontal flow trickling filters for rural wastewater [10,12]. A wide variety of media such as textile filters, zeolite, plastic, polystyrene and rubber have been employed in such state-of-the-art attached growth systems to support wastewater treating biomass [10–12]. However, in order to lower the cost of the installation of TBF systems, the self-sustainable packing media such as stone should be used for wastewater treatment [11].