**Calibrating and Validating the Biomonitoring Working Party (BMWP) Index for the Bioassessment of Water Quality in Neotropical Streams Calibrating and Validating the Biomonitoring Working Party (BMWP) Index for the Bioassessment of Water Quality in Neotropical Streams**

Ricardo Arturo Ruiz-Picos , Ricardo Arturo Ruiz-Picos, Jacinto Elías Sedeño-Díaz and Eugenia López-López

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38 Water Quality

Jacinto Elías Sedeño-Díaz and Eugenia López-López

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/66221

### **Abstract**

The Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP) is among the most used bioassess‐ ment indices for aquatic ecosystems quality assessment, which assigns scores to each macroinvertebrate taxa according to their sensitivity to organic pollution. However, BMWP scores must be calibrated to each geographical and ecological conditions. In this study, we obtain statistically derived scores of sensitivity for macroinvertebrates taxa from Neotropical Mexican rivers, Apatlaco and Chalma‐Tembembe rivers, Balsas Basin. We obtained water samples and aquatic macroinvertebrates in four sampling campaigns (dry and rainy seasons). Physicochemical parameters and the abundances of the aquatic macroinvertebrates were used for the BMWP index calibration, which was performed in steps obtaining: the physicochemical quality index (*Pcq*), incorporation of abundan‐ ces classes of macroinvertebrates taxa in the corresponding *Pcq* interval and the determination of bioindication values for each macroinvertebrate family. The BMWP calibrated index was validated and tested for the geographical range extension. The BMWP scores for Chalma‐Tembembe River (located in agricultural areas) showed bad polluted to regular and moderated polluted categories. The urban river zone of Apatlaco River showed: bad, very polluted to very bad categories. The BMWP calibrated is a suitable biomonitoring tool, allowing the detection of those zones that needs urgently a management and recovery plan.

**Keywords:** water quality assessment, biomonitoring tool, macroinvertebrate sensitivity, land use, bioindication values, water quality categories

© 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
