Bioindicator Based Water Quality Assessment of Warbo and Dabo Streams in Awash Catchment, Dendi Woreda, Ethiopia

The present study was aimed at assessing the water quality of Warbo and Dabo streams in awash catchment using macroinvertebrates as biological indicators. The status of water quality was assessed in terms of presence or absence of indicator organisms in relation to physico-chemical parameters. Hilsenhoff Family-level Biotic Index (H-FBI) results have shown that the site 6 had relatively higher value (6.5) followed by site 5 (5.8). The site 1 recorded least H-FBI value which accounts for 3.2 followed by site 4 (3.74). For ETHbios index, highest score was recorded at site 3 (120) followed by site 4 (102) while the lowest score was obtained for the site 6 and site 1 which accounts for 54 and 57 respectively. TheASPT value was comparatively higher for sites 1 (6.67) and site 3 (6.31) than other sites. Principal components analysis of physico-chemical variables showed wide variation among the study sites. Axis 1 and axis 2 of the PCAexplained 97.5% of the total variance regarding the sites versus physico-chemical association, where the first axis and second axis contributed 73.04% and 24.56% to the variation, respectively. Results of Pearson correlation reaveled that there exists significant relation between variuos pollutant parameters.