| Title |
The Influence of Sample Size on Environment Assessment Using Benthic Macroinvertebrates |
| Authors |
김아름 ( Ah Reum Kim ) ; 오민수 ( Min Woo Oh ) ; 공동수 ( Dong Soo Kong ) |
| Keywords |
Benthic macroinvetebrates; Biological index; Biomonitoring; Sample size |
| Abstract |
Benthic macroinvertebrates are widely used as biological indicators for assessing the integrity of aquatic ecosystem. However, sampling has usually been done with fixed sample size due to time consuming and costly process. This study was conducted to find out the influence of sample size on the biological indices (H, DI, R1, J, EPR, ESB and BMI) of benthic macroinvertebrates. The 15 replicate samples were quantitatively collected from each 3 different site of two mountain streams in May, 2011. With the replicate data, we combined the abundance of each species with all the possible combinations of the sample size. Along with the increase of sample size, the number of species increased continuously and did not converge. BMI showed little difference whereas other biological indices increased or decreased. |