HR: 15:45h
AN: NB44A-02    [Abstracts]
TI: Integration of Invertebrate Monitoring Data Into a Chemical-Based Water Quality Index for Selected Rivers in British Columbia, Canada.
AU: * Sylvestre, S
EM: stephanie.sylvestre@ec.gc.ca
AF: Environment Canada, #201-401 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC V6C 3S5 Canada
AU: Ryan, A
EM: andrea.ryan@ec.gc.ca
AF: Environment Canada, #201-401 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC V6C 3S5 Canada
AB: The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment Water Quality Index (CCME WQI) is a recently developed tool used to summarize complex water quality data for communication to senior managers and the public. Within the index, water quality is assessed relative to its desirable state, as defined by water quality objectives, and indicates the degree to which it is affected by human activities. The index combines water quality measures of concern at a particular site (e.g. coliforms, metals, dissolved oxygen) and compares them to objectives to provide a ranking (e.g. good, fair, poor) for rivers and lakes. In British Columbia, the federal and provincial governments collaboratively maintain a network of water quality stations which are sampled routinely for a range of chemical variables. Environment Canada incorporated an annual biomonitoring component at 10 of these stations using the reference condition approach. Benthic invertebrates are used in this approach to assess the health of a stream by comparing expected invertebrate communities with observed communities. At one station the biological community indicated an impaired environment where the CCME WQI indicated "good" water quality. We will discuss options for incorporating the information provided by the benthic invertebrate community into the calculation of the index.
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects
DE: 1806 Chemistry of fresh water
DE: 1871 Surface water quality
SC: North American Benthological Society [NB]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly