How Polluted Water Is The Macroinvertebrates

Water quality is a term used to describe the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of water, usually in respect to its suitability for a particular purpose. The Jordan River has other rivers flowing into it so it has multiple different sources of water. The physical predictors such as habitat type, channel type, temperature, and flow rate can assess the quality. Chemical predictors such as pH, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity can also assess the quality of a stream. Thirdly, the biological predictors, such as macroinvertebrates, can assess stream quality. Macroinvertebrates can be used to assess stream water quality because they determine how polluted water is. Some are tolerant to pollution and can live in it, and there’s others that are intolerant and cannot live in pollution whatsoever. To determine how polluted water is the macroinvertebrates are divided into Pollution Tolerance Groups (PT) 1, 2, 3, and 4 (Hoosier Riverwatch, 2014). So if there are a high number of tolerant macroinvertebrates living in a stream, the stream is assumingly polluted. In general, healthy streams support a variety of macroinvertebrates life. Jordan River is relatively healthy due to the face of finding a variety of very intolerant of pollution macroinvertebrates. What is the water quality of Jordan …show more content…
Only looking at one area of Jordan River could have been a limitation to the study because there could have been more of a diversity of macroinvertebrates found with different tolerance levels in other areas. Future studies that could be performed to further your findings are to figure out why there were some tolerant macroinvertebrates found and if it means anything about the pollution. Studies could also be done where there is not a parking garage near or people constantly walkling by to influence the pollution