Abstract
Anthropogenic pressures such as river infrastructure, agriculture and power generation are rapidly increasing in Southeast Asia, aimed at providing food security within the region. However, this will lead to unintended river health consequences, and, currently, most Southeast Asian countries have no country-specific tools for monitoring river health. In Myanmar, one of Southeast Asia’s poorest and most rapidly developing countries, no country-specific tools exist, and there is an urgent need to provide tools that can inform better management and trade-off decision making. This research evaluated three rapid macroinvertebrate bioassessment methods under Myanmar conditions. The objective of the research was to assess the applicability of existing internationally accepted indexing methods for use in Myanmar. Through taxa identification in the laboratory and statistical analysis, it was concluded that the method with the best fit for Myanmar taxa is The Asia Foundation index method, although differences were small. This Asia Foundation method is comparable to the Australian Waterwatch method but includes a family present in our samples that is not included in the Waterwatch method. We then modified this method to include Myanmar taxa not recorded in The Asia Foundation method. The modified index method could be further developed into a Myanmar specific tool for widespread use potentially in combination with the also tested miniSASS, a much easier order-based method better suitable for non-professionals. We recommend additional testing using sites on other rivers across the country to establish a professional indexing method for Myanmar.
Highlights
Anthropogenic activities in developing countries such as river regulation and pollution have a potentially negative cumulative impact on rivers and wetlands water quantity and quality, negatively impacting on river-dependent people, often the poorest people in a region [1,2].Water 2020, 12, 1408; doi:10.3390/w12051408 www.mdpi.com/journal/waterDudgeon [3] pointed to the fact that the deterioration in river water quality is increasing in developing countries, in Southeast Asian (SE Asia) countries
Biological indicators are well suited for assessing river water quality because they can detect the level of impact and identify which pressures may be causing the impact
Macroinvertebrate-based river health monitoring tools hold potential for developing countries to be able to monitor the health of their rivers and wetlands using rapid and relatively low cost technology, but methods developed outside of the country need to be tested and modified to be locally applicable [13]
Summary
Anthropogenic activities in developing countries such as river regulation and pollution have a potentially negative cumulative impact on rivers and wetlands water quantity and quality, negatively impacting on river-dependent people, often the poorest people in a region [1,2].Water 2020, 12, 1408; doi:10.3390/w12051408 www.mdpi.com/journal/waterDudgeon [3] pointed to the fact that the deterioration in river water quality is increasing in developing countries, in Southeast Asian (SE Asia) countries. Anthropogenic activities in developing countries such as river regulation and pollution have a potentially negative cumulative impact on rivers and wetlands water quantity and quality, negatively impacting on river-dependent people, often the poorest people in a region [1,2]. Hughes [4] found that SE Asia is a popular global hotspot of biodiversity, and known as the most biologically threatened region by anthropogenic activities. A growing interest in low-cost river health monitoring approaches has introduced different rapid assessment methods using aquatic macroinvertebrates communities [6,7]. The idea of designing these approaches was to make a scientifically reliable, rapid and low-cost technique that could be an alternative to physical and chemical methods to monitor river water quality by both scientist and non-scientist [8,9]
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