Application of Water Quality and Pollution Tolerance Indexes as Effective Tools for River Management
Application of Water Quality and Pollution Tolerance Indexes as Effective Tools for River Management
Joyce Osarogie Odigie*
ABSTRACT
High levels of anthropogenic activities alters freshwater bodies and thus depreciating water quality. Water quality (WQI) and Pollution tolerance indexes (PTI) are effective biomonitoring tools being applied in river management by freshwater ecologists. Obueniyomo River is the main water supply channel for the inhabitants of Agemokpa village in Ovia East Local Government Area of Edo State, as they are fully dependent on it for agricultural and domestic use, bringing its ecological integrity to question. These anthropogenic effects result in the deteriorating quality of the water, which hampers the distribution of benthic macroinvertebrates and may be hazardous to the health of the inhabitant that consumes it on a daily basis. The goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of WQI and PTI indexes as biomonitoring tools in river management. We studied Obueniyomo River to evaluate human influence on the river and aquatic biota from March 2016- February 2018. Three stations upstream, mid-stream and downstream were selected. The data from the three study sites were subjected to statistical and biodiversity analysis with the extracted data for water quality analyzed via Weighted Arithmetic Index and pollution tolerance Index via pollution sensitive group. The dominant benthos group was Chironomidae: making up 20.99%, 18.47% and 16.65% of the benthic community. The results of WQI calculated across the three study stations were above the 100 benchmark. However, the PTI values recorded at the three study stations were less than 10, correlating with WQI indicating pollution, making the water unsuitable for human consumption and aquatic life.
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December 2019
Vol. 34, Iss. 2, pp. 105-238
