Faculty of Geosciences – Utrecht University

January 2020
GEO4-2331

System Thinking, Scenarios and Indicators for SD

Richard Zhang (6858570)

Lee Johnstone (6454178)

Yi-Sin Chen (6814522)

Supervisor: Hugo de Boer and Kees Klein Goldewijk

Table of contents

Table of contents 1

Abstract 2

Introduction 2
Research aim 3

Methodology 3
Data analyzing 5

Results 5

Discussion 错误!未定义书签。
What could be changed 10

Conclusion 10

Reference 11

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Abstract
This research focuses on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.6, which focused on the
protection and restoration of water-related ecosystems. In the past, the degradation of water-
related ecosystems due to human activities, directly and indirectly, affected biodiversity and the
provision of ecological services.

This study attempts to investigate the relationship between anthropogenic activities and the
health of water-related ecosystems. We propose to use the EPT indicator and Biotic index as
indicators for this study and explore whether these two indicators can be used for SDG 6.6. The
hypothesis is that: from our study site, a higher EPT can be obtained in upstream from the areas
away from human activity, and sampling points closer to the urban area can obtain a lower EPT.

The research results show that there is no apparent difference between the upstream and
downstream indexes; that is, there is no apparent relationship between human activities and
river water quality. However, due to irregular sampling and inconsistent sampling time, it is
recommended to use more comprehensive data and further use ecological indicators to study
the relationship between human activities and water-related ecosystems.

Introduction
The world has lost a majority of its wetlands, including significant loss of freshwater ecosystems.
These losses will threaten sustainable development, because water-related ecosystems
underpin other SDGs, in particular, biodiversity, food production, and ecosystems. SDG 6.6 was
put forward to limit or restore ecosystem degradation (Ortigara, Kay and Uhlenbrook, 2018). Water
resources directly provide human life and economic needs, water-related ecosystems, such as
lakes, rivers, and vegetation wetlands, are the most biodiverse environment. It also provides
many products and services on which human beings depend, such as drinking water and
sanitation in social services, and essential ecological services, such as nutrient cycling, primary
production, and ecosystem resilience (MEA, 2005). If there is ecosystem degradation, there will
be a loss in this species richness, abundance, and distribution of wetland biological
communities are highly affected (Chawaka et al., 2018). According to SDG goal 6.6," By 2020,
protect and restore water-related ecosystems. The target is set to be achieved by 2020, unlike
most SDG targets which have a timeline of 2030". Therefore, protecting and restoring the water-
related ecosystem has unanimously become a vital and priority issue.

Biological indicators should be used to measure and monitor SDG goal 6.6 because it can
comprehensively reflect the water quality in the system. it provides a holistic indication of water
quality in a system as they can reflect cumulative effects of chemical, physical and biological
stresses (Govenor, Krometis and Hession, 2017 ). Moreover, "invertebrates" are managed as
indicators in this paper because they are known to be affected in all habitat and water body
types, some species more so than others. With a large number of species, it offers a spectrum
of responses to various water qualities as some are more sensitive than others.

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In this paper, river water quality is selected as the object of water-related ecosystem health
detection. Due to rivers hold characteristics of upstream and downstream, we can clearly divide
river areas that are affected by human activities, and further, compared with river water health.

Research aim
To monitor and measure water-related ecosystems, we propose the use of bioindicators to
measure river water quality and anthropogenic activities. The central hypothesis of this paper is
that in the same river, the upstream river has lower water quality due to less anthropogenic
activities. In contrast, the downstream rivers are more polluted due to flowing through human
activity areas and have lower water quality. Therefore, upstream and downstream river basins
should be related to invertebrate indicators. Additional, confirm whether the invertebrate index
can be used as a measure of SDG 6.6.

Methodology
The data of invertebrates were collected and posted by the department of environment of
Pennsylvania government (Pennsylvania government, 2020). At each sample site using the
freestone method “biologists work progressively upstream collecting invertebrates from riffle
areas distributed throughout a 100-meter stream reach. Biologists aimed to sample areas
representative of the variety of riffle represent in the sample reach. approximately one square
meter immediately upstream was disturbed with a net for approximately one minute to an
approximate depth of 10 cm.”(Pennsylvania government, 2020). This database offered quite a
lot of information about invertebrates in aquifer ecosystem in Pennsylvania, which is the eastern
province of America.

For our assignment, three rivers are picked up to see the difference of bioindicators between
upstream and downstream. They are the Susquehanna River, Delaware River and Schuylkill
River. Susquehanna River is the longest river in this region, whose length is 715 km. The city of
Harrisburg, the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was chosen as the pollution
point of human activity for this river, because the result of the longest river and largest city can
reveal whether the influence of huge city would be detected by Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and
Trichoptera (EPT indicator) and Biotic Index for a long distance (which means more time for
self-cleaning ability). Delaware (484 km) river was chosen because the upstream and
downstream are near to the different types of pollution. The upstream is close to an agricultural
farm and the downstream is close to a city. Schuylkill river (217 km) was chosen to compare
with Susquehanna River since the length is quite shorter and the pollution point nearby is a
village instead of a big city. The location of sampling points can be seen in the map below.

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Figure 1. Map showing data collection sites from the department of environment of Pennsylvania
government (Pennsylvania government, 2020)

Index calculating:

There are two indicators are calculating, one is EPT indicator and another is Biotic index. The
formula of these two indicators can be seen below.

𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑎𝑦𝑓𝑙𝑦,𝑐𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑓𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑓𝑙𝑦

𝐸𝑃𝑇 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟 = 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑠
× 100%

∑ 𝑡𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 × 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑠

𝐵𝑖𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑥 =
𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑠

Figure 2. Formulas used to calculate EPT and Biotic index (Stroud Water Research Center,
2020)

Generally, the EPT indicator is the percentage of three order invertebrates which are sensitive
to water quality. The tolerance of species is separated from 0 to 10, and the higher value means
the species can tolerate higher levels of pollution. Therefore, the higher value for EPT means
better quality of water, but the higher value for Biotic index means the worse quality of water.
The casual loops of those two indicators can be seen below.

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Figure 3. The casual loop of EPT indicators.

Figure 4. The casual loop of Biotic index.

Data analyzing
In order to see whether there is a significant difference between upstream and downstream,
one-way analysis of variance will be used. The null hypothesis is that there is no difference
between bioindicators of upstream and downstream.

Meanwhile, to see whether time is an important factor in the bioindicators, a graph of index and
year would be offered. The square r will show whether the connection is strong or not.

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Results

Figure 5. The EPT indicator of three rivers. Statistical Box Plots of EPT indicators for each study
area vs Ratio of EPT indicator. Median and Upper and Lower Confidence Intervals for EPT
indicator.

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Figure 6. The Biotic index of three rivers.Statistical Box Plots of Biotic Index for each study area,
Median and Upper and Lower Confidence Intervals for Biotic index

Table 1. P-value of one-way ANOVA

River EPT indicator Biotic index

Susquehanna 0.008 0.003
Delaware 0.926 0.841
Schuylkill 0.671 0.797

According to the graph above, it can be seen that only the quality of the Susquehanna river
shows a significant difference between upstream and downstream. However, that is against the
hypothesis since it shows that the water quality becomes even better in downstream. If human
activity, like construction, drainage and agricultural activity influence the water quality, the
bioindicators should show worse situation in downstream. As for the other two rivers, there is
not enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis since the p-value is too high.

The following graphs are the relationship between time and index. It can be seen that although
there seems to be an increasing trend, the R square is too low to say such a trend is convincing.

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Figure 7. The relationship between EPT indicator vs year per study area.

Figure 8. The relationship between Biotic index vs year per study area.

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Discussion
From the literature and our findings, we highlighted that invertebrates live in the water for all or
part of their lives, making them dependent on the water quality. They are significant within the
food chain as larger animals within the ecosystem depend on them as a food source. In
addition, macroinvertebrates have been recognised as good bioindicators for monitoring
ecosystem degradation, allowing us to identify and monitor the effects of forestry, urban and
industrial effluents in water systems (Oyague Passuni and Maldonado Fonkén, 2015). As the
EPT invertebrates are sensitive to different chemical and physical conditions. If there is a
change in the water quality or a change in the flow, then the macroinvertebrate community may
also change. The Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera invertebrates are usually found
in most healthy stream systems in Pennsylvania. However, if there is an unbalanced ratio, it
strongly suggests some sort of anthropogenic impact.

From our study site, we focused on urban areas (lower Delaware River, lower Susquehanna
River and the Schuylkill River) and agricultural/Forestry areas (upper Delaware River, and upper
Susquehanna river). In agricultural land use, to increase productivity, farmers use fertilizers
which in turn can increase the delivery of several compounds, such as phosphorus and
nitrogen, to an ecosystem. This can produce eutrophication and limit the presence of some
invertebrate and increase in others. The increase of Ephemeroptera can be seen in the
Delaware River from the upstream. Suggesting the forestry in the area may be responsible. In
comparison to the lower stream section, the EPT indicator and Biotic index indicated that the
downstream area was much cleaner and unpolluted, which does not our hypothesis, thus
making them not useful for detecting anthropogenic change along the river.

Other water quality issues that affect water-related ecosystems in the turbidity of the water. In
highly turbid water photosynthesis is affected by the reduction of light penetration and increases
the temperature of the water. Despite these trends, our results still show that there is no strong
relationship between Bio Index/ EPT and anthropogenic influences. The one-way ANOVA, From
table 1 our p-value to be very high for the Schuylkill River with 0.671 EPT and 0.797 Biotix
index, the Delaware River with 0.927 EPT and 0.841 Biotix index. The high P-value suggests
there are no clear effects by humans on water-related ecosystems. This could be the result of
river clean up under the Clean Water Act of 2002 (Sheeder and Evans, 2004). The State has
made a large effort to conduct a river clean up, particularly the Delaware River where the clean-
up is hailed as one of the world's top water quality success stories.

Concerning the Collection of data from the department of environment of Pennsylvania

government (Pennsylvania government, 2020). Although their website provides large amounts
of data of invertebrates sampled along the river, the concern is that samples are not regular and
the time between sample points could differ by many years. Some records contain up to four-
year data gaps, which makes the whole river analysis more difficult. From figure 7 and 8 we
show the large gaps in time when the samples were taken and it can be established that in an
unstable system it will be difficult to measure thresholds and fluctuations of particular
invertebrates. Monitoring also revealed a variety of opportunities, such as monitoring change

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over time. Monitoring at the ecosystem level and at basin scale is important and at the local
level, monitoring would provide evidence for practical action, while larger basin monitoring
would provide an overall perspective within hydrological boundaries. Good monitoring can help
us understand how ecosystems were changing that could provide evidence of their value that
could help decision-making towards future ecosystem health (Ortigara, Kay and Uhlenbrook,
2018).

What could be changed

The current methodology states that measurements need to go beyond water quality and
include the health of the ecosystem, but the latter particularly is optional (Guppy, Mehta and Qadir,
2019). The ability to standardise Bioindicators, it is necessary to standardize metrics with some
mathematical transformation that results in a logical progression of values. The use of EPTs
makes it a valuable tool to compare river qualities across regions. This is due to the way EPTs
are calculated, even though other regions will have different subtaxa communities the overall
representation by the order will be similar from region to region in healthy ecosystems.
However, not many countries/ regions collect invertebrate data and current methodology of
SDG 6 water quality parameters are reportedly difficult to measure for some countries (Guppy,
Mehta and Qadir, 2019) . This leads to the assumption that bioindicators will be as challenging if
not more challenging. Without the use of bioindicators the data are limited to a small number of
variables (Dissolved Oxygen,pH, Electric Conductivity, Threshold Odor Number, and Ortho
Phosphate) for surface water which, while being relevant from a generic pollution point of view it
does not accurately represent total ecosystem health such as degradation. Water quality
measures are dependent on monitoring data, The data is limited to these small number of
variables that will not accurately inform or monitor many situations where poor water quality is a
contributor to poor ecosystem condition. Whereas bioindicators give a more holistic view of the
ecosystem.

The term ‘water-related ecosystems’ is very broad and covers mountains, forests and other
ecosystems. We currently only consider open water, groundwater aquifers and vegetated
wetlands (Guppy, Mehta and Qadir, 2019). “Protect and restore” terminology does not measure
state whether an ecosystem is protected, how well it is protected or whether it is being restored.

Conclusion
From our results, we concluded that we need more data to use bioindicators to measure human
activities and their effects on water-related ecosystems. However, we have discussed how
bioindicators can measure some aspects of water quality and should be considered when
monitoring a water-related ecosystem. Furthermore, we established that the SDG process did
not reflect the concerns and trends on freshwater-ecosystem degradation and total ecosystem
health.

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Further adaptation should be considered for the terminology of SDG 6.6, but all in all its a
difficult task to cover a topic so complex. As many issues are too broad for decision making and
any data that is generated by countries can be inadequate to measure progress, further detailed
data would be essential for a more accurate understanding of water-related ecosystems and the
benefits they provide.

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