Predicting macroinvertebrate average score per taxon (ASPT) at water quality monitoring sites in Japanese rivers.

ABSTRACT

Biomonitoring with bioindicators such as river macroinvertebrates is fundamental for assessing the status of freshwater ecosystems. In Japan, water quality and biomonitoring surveys are conducted separately, leading to a lack of nationwide information on their relationships and the biological status of water quality monitoring (WQM) sites. To understand the biological status of WQM sites across Japan, we developed a multiple linear regression model to estimate the average score per taxon (ASPT) using river macroinvertebrate data surveyed at a total of 237 "aligned" sites based on the co-occurrence of biomonitoring and WQM sites. The resulting regression model with eight predictors, such as biological oxygen demand, the proportion of urban areas in the catchment, could predict ASPT with reasonable accuracy (e.g., an error of ±1 for 96% of the aligned data). Using this model, we estimated ASPT values at 2925 WQM sites in rivers nationwide, categorizing them into four levels of river environment quality "very good" (29% of WQM sites), "good" (50%), "fairly good" (14%), and "not good" (8%). Furthermore, we observed statistically significant correlations (p < 0.05; 0.4 ≤ r ≤ 0.7) between ASPT and all eight macroinvertebrate metrics examined, such as mayfly and stonefly richness, providing ecological implications of changes in ASPT.