Strategic Study of CAE >> 2013, Volume 15, Issue 3
The researches of integrated river health assessment of Liaohe River basin
State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Laboratory of Riverine Ecological Conservation and Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012,China
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Abstract
The multi-variable assessment method is a current trend for studying the health of river ecosystems. A system of candidate indices, including physica-l chemical parameters and nutrition parameters, algae index, macroinvertebrates index and fish index were set based on monitoringdata collected from the Taizi River basin in May 2009. Spearman's Rank correlations and Regression modelling were used to select compatible indices to build the metric-comprehensive assessment index which was applied to evaluate the Liaohe River healthy. The results indicated that the hole basin of Liaohe River was in poor healthy situation, the poor health sites was 146, account 83 % of total sites, were distributed in the Hunhe River, East Liao river and West Liao River basin where discharge of urban and industrial pollution was the primary factor impacting the river health. The other 17 % of all sites were designated as good healthy, mainly located at Taizi River basin, and the best sites was located at the headstream of Taizi River basin where little disturbanceby human activities occurred. About the biotic indicators assessment, fish community healthy level was the worst, the best one was algae.
Keywords
integrated assessment ; river health ; macroinvertebrate ; fish ; benthic algae