Notes for Benthic Invertebrate Data (French) (French, PDF)

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Publisher-reported update

2026-05-20

Tributary Biomonitoring (Lower Athabasca River) Benthic macroinvertebrates, comprising insects, crusteaceans, molluscs and worms, represent a group of organisms used widely in environmental monitoring programs as early warning indicators to assess the effects of change in water quality or physical habitat conditions on aquatic ecosystem health. An interpretive report (Culp et. al., 2018) was released in 2018 which included assessments of the benthic and supporting data from 2012-2015. An excerpt from the executive summary regarding the tributary benthic invertebrate results is provided below and the full report can be found online at https://open.alberta.ca/publications/9781460140314. “Biomonitoring of the LAR tributaries revealed benthic assemblages associated with good ecological condition (i.e., dominated by intolerant taxa). However, assemblages in areas with increased human disturbance exhibited divergence from reference sites and this trend may be associated with mild environmental stress. Moreover, in the Steepbank and Ells rivers, the composition of benthic assemblage was associated with gradients in catchment disturbance and PAC concentration. Further investigation is…

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