Measuring Water Health with Bioindicators

ECOSYSTEM HEALTH
“Our benthic macroinvertebrate moni“Basically, I work to create a bridge between the science and
toring program actually complements our
chemical water quality monitoring prothe community groups that want to establish long-term water
gram,” said Stephanie Strachan, a biologimonitoring projects.” – Gwen Janz, Living Lakes Canada
cal monitoring scientist with the Freshwater Quality Monitoring and Surveillance
Division at ECCC, who has witnessed the
evolution of CABIN since its inception.
While CABIN is the most established and developed bioCreated and launched nationally in 2006, ECCC leads and
monitoring protocol used in Living Lakes’s many ongoing
maintains CABIN as a collaborative program that provides naprojects, they also use and participate in the development of
tionally standardized protocols to monitor the health of aquatic
additional methodologies in partnership with other groups.
ecosystems by sampling the organisms that live there. Findings
Though still in development and not nationally recognized,
can then be shared with CABIN participants through the online
they use an emerging technology that has the potential to
CABIN database.
advance freshwater biomonitoring efforts.
This database and the promotion of data sharing have been a
One of these projects is called Sequencing the Rivers for
crucial aspect of CABIN. Strachan explains that when research
Environmental Assessment and Monitoring, aptly known
projects on the Great Lakes and Fraser River Basin began nearly
as STREAM. Piloted as a partnership between Living Lakes, the
30 years ago, teams found there wasn’t necessarily a shortage of
University of Guelph, WWF Canada, and ECCC, STREAM
data, but a lack of consistency in how it was collected and record- uses DNA metabarcoding to perform taxonomic analysis of samed. “That’s when it became apparent that there is definitely some
ples. This means benthic macroinvertebrate samples are essenvalue in standardized protocols,” said Strachan.
tially made into a “bug smoothie” and put through a sequencer
To scale these efforts, a training program was implemented
to detect what species are present. This method aims to offer an
in partnership with the University of New Brunswick and the
extremely time-efficient way of assessing benthic macroinverteCanadian Rivers Institute to make it easy to teach these standard- brate communities.
ized protocols in research groups across Canada.
Living Lakes is also a partner working on iTrackDNA. This
The expectation was that this would draw in some professional project is co-led by the University of Victoria and Institut
biologists from across the country, but to their surprise, there was national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) and uses targeted
interest from many sectors.
environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect the presence of specific
“It made us think a little bit more about what we should do
species of interest. The goal of the project is to reduce sampling
differently within the program to make sure that our training
efforts when studying species at risk, invasive species, or
program, the web tools, and the database we were providing
culturally important and rare species using more accurate and
was accessible, not just to professionals, but to this broader
cost-effective technology.
audience that we hadn’t anticipated,” notes Strachan. “We’re
These methods can be used independently or in tandem with
really focused on making sure that as the program evolves to be
others depending on the needs of the community. The most
more inclusive of community-based monitoring, we still have
important thing, however, is that data is being collected.
that scientific rigor.”
“The World Wildlife Fund Canada’s 2020 Watershed Report
indicated that nearly 60 per cent of Canada’s sub-watersheds are
The importance of community involvement
data deficient. This is a problem in a time of shifting baselines
One organization that has been providing CABIN training for
where climate change is really accelerating environmental
more than 10 years is Living Lakes Canada. By working closely
change,” stresses Janz. With the sheer size of the country, collectwith community groups including First Nations, consultants,
ing data isn’t a task the one entity can take on themselves. “We
and other non-profits, they work to enhance, protect, and rehaneed community groups across the country monitoring their
bilitate freshwater areas across Canada.
local watersheds to collect that baseline data.”
“Basically, I work to create a bridge between the science and
the community groups that want to establish long-term waFilling in the gaps
ter monitoring projects,” said Gwen Janz, the Biomonitoring
The complexity doesn’t stop at land mass. While it’s ideal for a
Program Manager at Living Lakes. “A lot of the work involves
standard like CABIN to be used by everyone across the nation,
coordinating fieldwork and travelling to different communities
one standard alone can’t capture the nuances of water bodies
across Canada to deliver biomonitoring training courses and
across a country as vast and varying as Canada. For example, the
provide help with monitoring local watersheds.”
Northern Great Plains in Saskatchewan go through cycles of ex-
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WATER C AN ADA • M ARCH/APRIL 2024
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T

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