Bioindicators and Water Quality Assessment
In this video, Prof Fan explains the concept of bioindicators and how living organisms can be used to assess the health of natural ecosystems.
Bioindicators are biological tools that evaluate environmental changes including anthropogenic disturbances such as pollution or natural stressors such as drought. Each organism has its own optimal range in response to environmental disturbances, and this range is called a tolerance range. Good indicator species have moderate ranges for disturbances and can effectively provide information indicating changes in the surrounding conditions. However, not all species can be used as bioindicators, depending on their tolerance ranges for environmental gradients. Bioindicators can also be population or community levels, indicating environmental disturbances by assessing alterations of taxon compositions.
Review questions:
- What are bioindicators?
- What is a tolerance range?
- What makes a good indicator species?
- What hierarchical levels can bioindicators be used to assess?
Sustainable Development in Health and Ecology
Sustainable Development in Health and Ecology
Reach your personal and professional goals
Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.
Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.
