Monitoring and assessment of water quality in the Haraz River of Iran, using benthic macroinvertebrates indices Gholamreza Banagar, Borhan Riazi, Hossein Rahmani & Mehdi Naderi Jolodar Biologia Botany, Zoology and Cellular and Molecular Biology ISSN 0006-3088 Biologia DOI 10.2478/s11756-018-0107-5 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences. This e- offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Biologia https://doi.org/10.2478/s11756-018-0107-5 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Monitoring and assessment of water quality in the Haraz River of Iran, using benthic macroinvertebrates indices Gholamreza Banagar1 & Borhan Riazi1 & Hossein Rahmani 2 & Mehdi Naderi Jolodar3 Received: 20 January 2018 /Accepted: 6 August 2018 # Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences 2018 Abstract The objective of this study was to assess the relationship between river water quality and the distribution of benthic macroin- vertebrate communities in the Haraz River in Iran. Using a surber net sampler, benthic macroinvertebrate communities along the stream was sampled in wet and dry seasons of 2015 at nine stations with three replications. The physicochemical water quality parameters were measured in the field by water checker. Hilsenhoff biotic Indices, Shannon Wiener Diversity Indices, Average Score per Taxon (ASPT) Index and Pielou Evenness Index were applied to carry out a biological assessment of water quality. A total of 3781 (spring 769, summer 1092, autumn 1095 and winter 825) benthic macroinvertebrate specimens belonging to 4 orders, 11 classes and 16 families were identified. The lowest number of taxa was recorded in spring while the highest was recorded in autumn. Station 9 had the lowest number of taxa while the highest number of taxa was recorded at station 3. The average values (±SD) of the water quality parameters were temperature 14.75 ± 4.38 °C, pH 7.93 ± 0.62, water flow 14.11 ± 9.04 m3 s−1, electric conductivity 532.75 ± 161.35 μmohs cm−1, total dissolved solids 296.61 ± 76.21 mg L−1,salinity0.28± 0.07 mg L−1, turbidity 580.77 ± 149.92 NTU and dissolved oxygen 8.08 ± 0.75 mg L−1. The assessment of stations 1 to 6 indicated that water quality conditions were suitable. In addition, substantial level of organic pollution was observed in stations 7 and 8. In station 9 water quality was fairly poor, requiring a more favourable management based on the capacity of the self- purification of the Haraz River. Keywords Benthic macroinvertebrate communities . Haraz River . Water quality Introduction Water quality in river ecosystems are usually monitored by aquatic organisms as well as chemical and physical tests. The surface water quality is an important issue in aquatic Physical and chemical monitoring methods reflects immediate organisms surviving and has become a major environmental measurements, while aquatic organisms respond better to the concern worldwide. River ecosystems have been increasingly environmental changes (Naumoski et al. 2009). Aquatic or- threatened by various anthropogenic activities over the past ganisms, such as diatoms, macrophytes, benthic macroinver- decades. Considering the importance of rivers, water quality tebrates and fish, should be used as bioindicators (López- monitoring is essential for assessing pollutants. López and Sedeño-Díaz 2015), the reason is that they are the major indicators applied in the official bioassessment systems in the different countries (Ibáñez et al. 2010). Macroinvertebrate communities are very good bioindicator of water quality and play a key role in identifying the pollution * Hossein Rahmani [email protected] load of surface water and food webs. Benthic macroinverte- brates are used as bioindicators of water quality due to their high diversity, known pollution tolerances, low displacement, 1 Department of Environmental Sciences, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran different feeding strategies, and sensitivity to environmental disturbance. 2 Department of Fisheries, Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University (SANRU), Sari, Iran Different methods based on the employing of macroinver- tebrates for assessing river have been developed. The assess- 3 Caspian Sea Ecology Research Center, Iranian Fisheries Sciences Research Institute, Sari, Iran ment methods of macroinvertebrates are mostly based on Author's personal copy Biologia species diversity, density, biomass, tolerance value, and func- stations are reported in Table 1. All samples were preserved tional and trophic variables. The distribution, population den- in the field in 4% formalin and brought to the laboratory. The sity and diversity of the macroinvertebrates community are macroinvertebrates were sorted, then they were identified up affected by seasonal alterations, although seasonal changes to the lowest possible taxonomic level and finally, they were in macroinvertebrates community can be large in some sys- counted under a Loupe. The water quality parameters such as tems while small in others. Seasonal patterns in climate, such temperature, pH, Electric Conductivity, Total Dissolved as precipitation and temperature, result in within-year changes Solids, salinity, turbidity and Dissolved Oxygen were mea- in aquatic ecosystems (Chi et al. 2017). Changes in tempera- sured in the field by water checker (Hach Sension 5, USA ture and precipitation present serious challenges to macroin- and Aqualytic AL15, Germany). vertebrates community in both wet and dry seasons. A great many studies on benthic macroinvertebrate com- Data analyses munities of rivers have been reported by several authors. As such (Rossaro et al. 2007; Resende et al. 2010;Meharietal. Utilizing the PRIMER 5 software, macroinvertebrate metrics 2014; Gebrehiwot et al. 2017; Wang and Tan 2017; Wright- were calculated. The following indices were considered in Stow and Wilcock 2017). Meanwhile, Naderi Jolodar (2008) particular: Hilsenhoff biotic Indices, Shannon Wiener conducted a similar study on the upstream of the Haraz River Diversity Indices, and Average Score per Taxon (ASPT) and with an emphasis on the effect of salmon farms on river mac- Pielou Evenness Index which were calculated by the equa- roinvertebrates. However, very few studies have been carried tions below: out on benthic macroinvertebrates in Iran. Varnosfaderany et al. (2010) have shown that macroinvertebrates diversity de- Hilsenhoff index creased from upstream to downstream in Zayanderud, the im- pact of fish farm effluents on water quality assessed in Tajan ∑ðÞX iti River (Namin et al. 2013). Shokri et al. (2014) estimated river BI ¼ n ecology status by many biotic and abiotic indices and showed the relationships between macroinvertebrate genera and phys- Where Xi is the number of specimens in each taxonomic icochemical parameters. group, ti is the pollution tolerance score for that taxonomic The major focus of this study was to appraise the relation- group, and n is the total number of organisms in sample. ship between river water quality and the distribution of ben- Macroinvertebrates are given with a numerical pollution tol- thic macroinvertebrate in the Haraz River, which are particu- erance score (ti) ranging from 0 to10 (Table 2). larly, affected by pollutants. Shannon–wiener index Material and methods H 0 ¼ −∑s P lnP i¼1 i i Study area Where Pi is the proportion of individuals found in the species i. The Haraz River is located in the Mazandaran province in the Average Score per Taxon (ASPT): north part of Iran. It lies between longitude of 52° 03′ 82˝Eand 52° 26′ 60˝E, and latitude of 35° 50′ 01˝N and 36° 39′ 77˝N. ASPT ¼ BMWP=N The Haraz River originates from the Alborz Mountain, pass- ing from Amol City, and then it enters the southern coast of the Where: BMWP = the value of Biological Monitoring Caspian Sea (Fig. 1). The Haraz River is about 185 km long Working Party; N = total number of families. The ASPT and has average width ranges between 50 to 500 m at different equals the average of the tolerance scores of all macroinver- locations. Annual average precipitation is 888 mm, a large tebrate families that were found, and ranges from 0 to 10 part is occurring in the cloudy seasons (Saremi et al. 2013; (Hawkes 1998)(Table3). Banagar et al. 2008). Pielou evenness index Water sampling 0 H 0 H 0 J ¼ ¼ Applying Surber net samplers, we collected benthic macroin- 0 Hmax lnS vertebrate’s samples along the stream in wet and dry seasons of 2015 at each of the nine stations with three replicates Where H′max is the maximum possible value of Shannon di- (30.5 cm × 30.5 cm). Latitude and longitude of sampling versity. The index oscillates from 0 to 1. Author's personal copy Biologia Fig. 1 A screenshot of Google Earth™ showing the Haraz River from Iran and sampling stations 1-9 Data analyses were performed by utilizing the statistical Maximum value of EC was 720 μ-mhos cm−1 at station 9 packages Primer 5 and SPSS (version 24). The Kolmogorov– and the minimum amount was 334.25 μ-mhos cm−1 at station Smirnov test was accomplished in order to analyze the normal- 3. The lowest turbidity was 491.25 NTU at station 4 and the ity of data distribution. One way-ANOVA, followed by highest value was 731.25 NTU at station 1. Maximum value Tukey’stest(p < 0.05), was conducted so as to test the signif- of TDS was 372.5 at station 1 and the minimum TDS was icant differences of biotic indices and physicochemical param- 247.5 at station 4.