IX. Biological Indices and Saprobic Systems

This exasperating material is likely to become unusually valuable if you end up working for a consulting firm. They tend to assume you will know everything "biological" when you are hired. One of the realms of assumed knowledge will be associated with the comparative degradation of some aquatic system - almost always a stream - which is said to be degraded by the inputs (effluents) of some municipality or industry. No established system will completely suit your needs. If you are clever enough to recognize the bases for the distinctions among these few systems, you may be able to produce a measurement index of some sort which will actually be appropriate to the system you must evaluate, AND you may actually be able to satisfy the boss/administrator/enforcement agency person/CO of the firm, or community board of the town, that you have based your somewhat individualized procedures on well established, prior work. Then again, they may think you are making up a brand new evaluation system. In which case you will need all of the prior systems you can find (I will give you a Xeroxed listing of some older ones for your notebook - remind me if I manage to forget it. I would try to put it on the net, but it must be retyped to do so) to justify every action you take. There are hundreds of such systems. Many employ techniques you might need. Lots of them are almost pure nonsense. We must discuss why some work and some do not. You really may find, to your dismay, that you must undertake such a design project in the future.

BTW - there are no new approaches to in situ assessment, not really. All ask you to look carefully at what is present and compare it to what you believe should be there.

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Faust, S.F. 1975. Keating, K.I. 1975. Material from a book length report to CEQ. These summaries will give you some idea of the enormous number of systems which have been proposed. Most of them work well when applied by the scientists who developed them - to the systems for which they were developed. Everything else is a misfit at some level. BUT, everything is relative. The original intent was to cover as many systems as we could find in a relatively brief period of time. I included this because I think you will benefit if you experience the remarkable number of different systems. There are dozens! Some newer, some older - it is the variety that you need to respect. Generalizations, not specific inclusions, are what you must make from this info.

The following two papers are translations and can be found in The Biology of Water Pollution. Compiled by Keup, L.; Ingram, W., and K. Mackenthun for the U.S. Dept. of the Interior [F.W.P.C.A.] 1967.

They are HISTORY in the making. Many modern authors take both their pattern and their philosophy from K and M (aka Kolkwitze and Morrison) and then proceed to impugn the logic of K and M. Usually, the author in question has never read these papers of K. & M. They were far from limited in their appreciation for the complexity and the uniqueness of the ecosystems they sought to evaluate. Whenever you spot comments suggesting that the "currently" offered system is better than K and M because it recognizes variability/idiosyncrasy/complexity of aquatic systems, be suspicious, the authors have probably never actually seen a copy of these original papers. I read German, most American students do not. I felt like I had received a Christmas gift when somebody gave me copies of these translations because I could not effectively defend the German texts.

Kolkwitze, R. and M. Marsson. 1908. Ecology of plant saprobia. Berichte der deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft 26:505-519.

Kolkwitze, R. and M. Marsson. 1909. Ecology of animal saprobia. International Revue der gesamten Hydrobiologie und Hydrogeographie 2:126-152.

Dr. John Cairns is a somewhat charismatic character. I have seen him in action at meetings. He could run for office- as I understand it, protégé of Dr. Patrick. Of the people I have ever encountered, he has done some of the best translation jobs from science to politics. Read whatever he offers with the notion that he really is a gifted communicator. But, do keep in mind that salesmen and politicians are also gifted communicators. Sometimes the story teller makes a story better than it really is.

Cairns, J. Indicator species vs. the concept of community structure as an index of pollution. American Water Resources Bulletin 10:338-347.

Cairns, J. 1974. Critical species, including man, within the biosphere. Die Naturwissenschaften 62:193-199.

Dr. Patrick is one of those "special people" about whom everyone in a field should know. She is in her nineties, still an active scientist, as the curator emeritus of Limnology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, she heads one of the very largest limnological research groups extent. She and Hutchinson were buddies. The concept of the diatometer made quite an impression on the field. It is most assuredly NOT her only significant contribution.

Patrick, R. 1962. Informal discussion sessions: Algae as indicators of pollution. Biological Problems in Water Pollution. Third Seminar Robert A. Taft Sanitary Engineering Center. U.S. Dept. H.E.W., Public Health Service, Div. Water Supply and Pollution Control, Cincinnati, Ohio 225-231.

Patrick, R. 1973. Use of Algae, especially diatoms, in the assessment of water quality. Biological Methods for the Assessment of Water Quality, ASTM STP 528, pp.76-95.

Can you interpret one of the curves generated by diatometer data? Can you produce one which might represent a clean, a dirty, a damaged, system? What would it look like? Try drawing one and then looking at it as if you had never before seen it. Does it tell you what you meant it to tell you?

Bick, Hartmut. 1962. A review of European methods for hte biological estimation of water pollution levels. World Health Organization. 27 pp. Note that the systems were developed early (K & M) and redeveloped and reshaped here and there, but regardless of continent, K & M did it right in the first place.