Monitoring and assessment of water health quality in the Tajan River, Iran using physicochemical, fish and macroinvertebrates indices

Asghar Abdoli,Jaber Aazami,Paul J Van Den Brink,Hormoz Sohrabi,Abbas Esmaili-Sari

doi:10.1186/s40201-015-0186-y

Abstract

BackgroundNowadays, aquatic organisms are used as bio-indicators to assess ecological water quality in western regions, but have hardly been used in an Iranian context. We, therefore, evaluated the suitability of several indices to assess the water quality for an Iranian case study.MethodsMeasured data on biotic (fish and macroinvertebrates) and abiotic elements (28 physicochemical and habitat parameters), were used to calculate six indices for assessment of water quality and the impact of human activities in the Tajan river, Iran. GIS, uni- and multivariate statistics were used to assess the correlations between biological and environmental endpoints.ResultsThe results showed that ecological condition and water quality were reduced from up- to downstream. The reduced water quality was revealed by the biotic indices better than the abiotic ones which were linked to a variety of ecological water quality scales.ConclusionThe fish index showed a strong relationship with long-term database of physicochemical parameters (12 years (94%)), whereas macroinvertebrates index is more correlated with short-term data (76%). Meanwhile, the biotic and abiotic elements in this study were also classified well by PCA. Pulp and wood plants and sand mining are indicated to have the most negative effects on the river ecosystem.

Highlights

One of the greatest environmental challenges of this century is to sustain natural biological structural and functional attributes of aquatic ecosystems, rivers in particular
The goals of this study were to determine and classify the ecological water quality of Tajan River based on different indices of water quality and to evaluate their performance, to zone the water quality based on these indices and GIS (Geographic Information System), to assess the effects of human land uses on the river and to compare the results between up- and down-stream parts of the river
In the upstream part of the Tajan River, the higher number of residents has no major impact on the physical structure of habitat

Summary

Introduction

One of the greatest environmental challenges of this century is to sustain natural biological structural and functional attributes of aquatic ecosystems, rivers in particular This goal requires that we know the condition of these dynamic systems and how they are being affected by specific factors and forces [1]. Macroinvertebrates are used for bioassessment because they are relatively sampled and are a very biodiverse group of species inhabiting waters that is contaminated to a different extent (from clean to highly polluted) [7,8,9]. They are important for the cycling of organic matter and provide food resources for higher trophic levels. We evaluated the suitability of several indices to assess the water quality for an Iranian case study

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Conclusion