ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Development and Use of a Phytoplankton-Index
of Biotic Integrity to Assess Yongjiang River
Ecosystem Health
Lihua Teng1, Bin Zhang2, Xuejun Liu1, Chunjie Bai1, Jie Zhang1,
Dapeng Tan2, Pingsha Huang1
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1College of Biology and Environment, Zhejiang Wanli University, Ningbo 315100, China
2Ningbo Environmental Protection Research and Design Institute, Ningbo 315012, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2014;23(3):901-908
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
In order to assess the aquatic ecosystem health in Yongjiang River, 13 sites from were sampled annually
for density of individual phytoplankton species and community composition. Box-plots and Pearson correlation
of 21 pre-selected metrics were then analyzed based on annual sampling and statistics data of the phytoplankton
community. These metrics represent the characteristics of the phytoplankton community. Five of
them were then used independently to evaluate the health of the aquatic ecosystem. It was found that the aquatic
ecosystems’ health at all sampling sections in Yongjiang River was good. After calculating P-IBI values at
each section and then comparing the values with the corresponding evaluation criteria, we found that the health
at the upstream sections was better than the downstream sections.