Biomonitoring B.C.

The goal of biomonitoring is to assess aquatic ecosystem health and support informed decisions for freshwater resources.

On this page

• Why biological monitoring is important
• Monitoring aquatic life with the CABIN approach
• Documents related to CABIN in B.C.

Why biological monitoring is important

Stream monitoring programs usually analyze water and sediment samples to evaluate the health of a waterbody. Biological monitoring can also be included to document the aquatic species that live in a stream.

Aquatic life can be affected by many factors that are not measured with water and sediment samples. This includes changes in flow, habitat degradation, unknown chemicals, spills, and invasive species, among others.

Benthic macroinvertebrates are aquatic bottom-dwellers without backbones, which are monitored for several reasons:

• They're sensitive to many types of disturbance
• They respond to local and cumulative impacts
• They're found in all freshwater ecosystems
• They're an important part of aquatic food webs

Monitoring aquatic life with the CABIN approach

The Ministry of Environment collaborates with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) to develop and maintain biomonitoring tools in B.C. using the nationally standardized Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network (CABIN) program.

CABIN collections information about benthic macroinvertebrate communities to assess the ecological health of wadeable streams and provides standard methods for collecting and analyzing data.

An important feature of CABIN is the reference condition approach (RCA). The RCA uses predictive models to evaluate test sites where there are questions about the health of the aquatic ecosystem.

The reference models are built with data collected from streams that are minimally affected by human activities. The models match test sites with similar reference streams and compare the structure of the benthic macroinvertebrate communities.

The differences provide information about the effect of stressors within the test site’s watershed. There are currently 7 CABIN reference models in B.C. 

Documents related to CABIN in B.C.

Reference site selection

Reference sites are selected in watersheds that have minimal impacts from human activities and other stressors. Reference sites are selected following guidance provided in Yates and Bailey (2009). 

Prior to 2015, reference sites were selected using GIS tools, as described in Norris 2012 (PDF, 683KB), and using best professional judgement.