Rapid assessment of the degree of organic pollution in two segments of Molawin creek using leaf litter-baited macroinvertebrates as bioindicators

Date

4-2014

Degree

Bachelor of Science in Biology

College

College of Arts and Sciences (CAS)

Adviser/Committee Chair

Charina Gracia B. Banaay

Restrictions

Restricted: Not available to the general public and to those bound by the confidentiality agreement. Access is available only after consultation with author/thesis adviser.

Abstract

The use of macroinvertebrates as indicators of the degree of pollution in the two segments of Molawin Creek: along the Makiling Botanical Garden (MBG) and along the Student Union Building (SU) was tested. The calculated biotic index of the macroinvertebrates collected using leaf litter baiting showed that the water quality of the MBG segment is fair and the degree of organic pollution is fairly significant. On the other hand, the SU segment was found to have fairly poor to poor water quality and the degree of organic pollution was very significant. These findings were supported by other parameters, namely ? nutrient concentrations of the stream water, most probable number (MPN) of coliforms and biological oxygen demand (BOD). The nutrient concentrations showed that the SU segment of Molawin Creek is eutrophic with 0.226 mg L-1 total phosphorus and 0.848 mg L-1 nitrogen nitrates while MBG has only 0.08 mg L-1 total phosphorus and nitrogen-nitrates was not detected. Water samples from SU segment had 9400 MPN mL-1 coliforms while MBG had 35 MPN mL-1 coliforms indicating the greater fecal contamination in SU than in MBG. Lastly, the BOD was significantly higher (p<0.05) in SU than in MBG. All the parameters are consistent with the biotic index indicating that SU has greater degree of organic pollution than MBG. The effect of organic pollution to leaf litter decomposition was also determined. The ratio of exponential decay rate of SU to MBG shows that there is already an indication of at least a moderate impairment of function in the SU segment which is probably due to the high levels of organic pollution as indicated by the macroinvertebrate biotic index. These results showed that macroinvertebrates are useful indicators of organic pollution in streams and that leaf litter decomposition parameters may complement the data obtained from the more established structural metric of macroinvertebrate diversity.

Language

English

Location

UPLB Main Library Special Collections Section (USCS)

Call Number

LG 993.5 2014 B4 /M46

Document Type

Thesis

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