Correlation Analysis between Hydrologic Flow Metrics and Benthic Macroinvertebrates Index (BMI) in the Han River Basin, South Korea

Abstract

In aquatic ecosystems, flow is one of the most essential elements of aquatic species. It is necessary to explore the correlation with ecological indices for the management guidelines of aquatic ecosystems using flow because aquatic ecosystem data are limited. This study calculated the flow metrics using the flow and analyzed the correlation between the flow metrics and the ecological index. This study attempted to understand the correlation between the ecologic index and flow metrics. Flow metrics were quantified flow in various ways, depending on the size, frequency, and design of the flow. The characteristics of flow metrics were identified and the correlation with the ecological index was studied. The Pearson correlation coefficient values for 22 watersheds were compared using the flow data from 2008 to 2015 and the ecological index data from the BMI. In watersheds with high imperviousness, the Pearson correlation coefficient was negative, which indicated that the correlation in this study provides basic data for the quantitative evaluation of the river ecosystem by identifying the relationship between imperviousness and BMI. As a result, the highest Pearson correlation coefficient values of flow metrics were related to the flow coefficient of variation (MACV13-16; MHCV; MLCV).