Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - 8:45 AM
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Freshwater Biomonitoring with Macroinvertebrates in Far East Russia

T.S. Vshivkova, Laboratory of Freshwater Hydrobiology, Institute of Biology and Soil Sciences, Far Eastern Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladovostok-22, 690022, Russia

Freshwater pollution has become a serious problem in Russian Far East (RFE) in recent decades. The situation has got out of control because the government program on nature conservation is ineffective, environmental monitoring by government agencies is based on obsolete methods with very little use of macroinvertebrates, the general public is uninformed and apathetic about ecology and nature conservation, the monitoring is overboard of official observations, and private monitoring is not developed.

            The Russian Clean Water Project (RCWP) was created in 2003 and Clean Water Center (CWC) established in 2004 under aegis of the IBSS FEB RAS for the development of policies that will protect freshwaters basing on cooperation of private, scientific, and governmental institutions. The goal of the CWC is to develop rapid bioassessment using macroinvertebrates suitable for monitoring freshwaters in the RFE. The CWC established a network of public eco-agencies (PEA) to provide extensive freshwater monitoring by specially educated ecologists and volunteers. Local PEA carries out bioassessments and submits their results to the CWC. Following analysis by scientists at CWC, the data and conclusions are passed to federal and regional nature protection departments, who investigate the sources of pollutants and develop strategies to help mitigate their impacts.