miniSASS — A novel technique for community participation in river health monitoring and management

Abstract

Reliable indicators of water quality and river health are often difficult and expensive to derive. This paper reports on a process to develop a low technology, scientifically reliable and robust technique to monitor water quality in rivers and streams. With these requirements in mind the authors set about developing a simplified method of biomonitoring based on the tried and tested SASS (South African Scoring System) technique. This involved reducing the taxonomic complexity of SASS to a few aquatic invertebrate 'groupings' which would act as surrogates for the complete suite of SASS taxa.