Biotic Indices and Water Quality
Having an accurate estimate of a stream's water quality is very important when deciding how to manage the ecosystem to improve overall ecosystem health. One way to estimate water quality is to take a survey of the stream's macroinvertebrate community.
 
Why use macroinvertebrates to study stream health?
  • They tend to live much of their lives of a year or more in the stream in a localized area
  • They are relatively easy to collect and count
  • They are integrators of different environmental conditions
  • Aquatic macroinvertebrates have a wide variety of tolerances to organic pollutants
  • Community makeup is changed based on the amount of pollution in an ecosystem
  • The frequency with which some groups appear can be correlated with different levels of stream pollution