The first comprehensive application of TR-BMWP to evaluate the habitat quality of some streams in ecologically different areas of Turkey


Türkmen G., Kazancı G. N.

3rd Central European Symposium for Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Research, Lodz, Polonya, 8 - 13 Temmuz 2018, ss.75

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Lodz
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Polonya
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.75
  • Hacettepe Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Fundamentally, the concept of biotic index combines the diversity concept and the indicator species concept together. Since biological communities are a product of their environment, different kinds of organisms have different habitat preferences, and some of them are pollutionsensitive species and some of them are pollution-tolerated species. Basically, biotic indices are based on this fact. For determining habitat quality of running waters, biotic indices based on benthic macroinvertebrate have been used for decades in Europe frequently. Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP) score system is of the most used and preferred biotic index among the other biotic indices, such as ASPT, TBI, etc. It was established in the United Kingdom in 1983 to assess water qualities of running waters. However, this index was created according to the macroinvertebrate fauna of the UK. In addition, the river systems in the UK,as an island ecosystem, are ecologically and hydromorphologically different from the other countries. To reduce these differences to minimum, some countries have adapted this index according to their benthic macroinvertebrate fauna by modifying the original BMWP. As in Europe, BMWP has been the most commonly used biotic index for water quality and biological monitoring studies in Turkey. However, due to the fact that environmental conditions and benthic macroinvertebrate fauna of running waters in Turkey are different from the UK and Europe, the researchers have sometimes encountered incompatibilities when applying the original BMWP. To overwhelming these problems, a national-based biotic index (TR-BMWP) based on the benthic macroinvertebrate fauna of Turkey was established by modifying the original BMWP in 2016. TR-BMWP biotic index consists of 142 benthic macroinvertebrate families. In TR-BMWP, certain families which are absent in the BMWP were included, and scores for some families were adjusted to suit Turkish river conditions. In this research, TR-BMWP was applied to some streams in ecologically different areas ofTurkey along with the original BMWP and the other BMWP versions such as Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Czech and Greek versions to evaluate habitat quality of the streams. In addition, some diversity indices were also applied. As a result, TR-BMWP scores of the sites were compared with the other BMWP versions, and habitat qualities of the collecting sites were determined.