The Urgent Need for River Health Biomonitoring Tools for Large Tropical Rivers in Developing Countries: Preliminary Development of a River Health Monitoring Tool for Myanmar Rivers

Abstract

Anthropogenic pressures such as river infrastructure, agriculture and power generation are rapidly increasing in Southeast Asia, aimed at providing food security within the region. However, this will lead to unintended river health consequences, and, currently, most Southeast Asian countries have no country-specific tools for monitoring river health. In Myanmar, one of Southeast Asia’s poorest and most rapidly developing countries, no country-specific tools exist, and there is an urgent need to provide tools that can inform better management and trade-off decision making. This research evaluated three rapid macroinvertebrate bioassessment methods under Myanmar conditions. The objective of the research was to assess the applicability of existing internationally accepted indexing methods for use in Myanmar. Through taxa identification in the laboratory and statistical analysis, it was concluded that the method with the best fit for Myanmar taxa is The Asia Foundation index method, although differences were small. This Asia Foundation method is comparable to the Australian Waterwatch method but includes a family present in our samples that is not included in the Waterwatch method. We then modified this method to include Myanmar taxa not recorded in The Asia Foundation method. The modified index method could be further developed into a Myanmar specific tool for widespread use potentially in combination with the also tested miniSASS, a much easier order-based method better suitable for non-professionals. We recommend additional testing using sites on other rivers across the country to establish a professional indexing method for Myanmar.

Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Community Changes Downstream of the Hydropower Generating Dams in Myanmar-Potential Negative Impacts From Increased Power Generation

“…We estimated the ecological river water quality at all sampling sites in both study rivers using Myanmar Aquatic Biomonitoring Assessment Index (MABA) method by Ko et al (2020) based on all collected taxa of three macroinvertebrates samples at each site. We calculated the ecological river water quality index using all collected and identified taxa in the laboratory with the following equation of MABA (Ko et al, 2020); Ecological Water Quality Index =…”

“…The score of individual taxa ranges from 1 to 10 in the MABA method. The MABA method classifies three different ecological river water quality level based on the calculated index; between 1 and 2.9 means poor water quality, between 3.0 and 6.9 means fair water quality, and between 7.0 and 10.0 means good water quality (Ko et al, 2020).…”

“…We determined the ecological water quality conditions at each sampling site in both rivers using the MABA rapid assessment method by Ko et al (2020). Both rivers showed good water quality conditions in all upstream sites in both sampling period (> 6.9 Index value) ( Figure 6).…”

“…Recently, the preliminary development of river health biomonitoring using macroinvertebrates has been reported (Ko et al, 2020). Due to the inexistence of biomonitoring methods in Myanmar, the preliminary development method was based on the existing Asian indexing method using taxa information from undisturbed or least-impacted sites in the upstream reaches of the Myitnge and Chuangmagyi Rivers.…”

“…Due to the inexistence of biomonitoring methods in Myanmar, the preliminary development method was based on the existing Asian indexing method using taxa information from undisturbed or least-impacted sites in the upstream reaches of the Myitnge and Chuangmagyi Rivers. The study by Ko et al (2020) shows that an indexing method using aquatic macroinvertebrate communities works well in estimating ecological river water quality, and the study recommends applying it in impacted sites (downstream) to access human influences. In the current study, we used this Myanmar-modified method to estimate ecological river water quality both upstream and downstream of dams, to see the impact of dams on river water quality.…”