Bioindicators

Keywords

Bioindicator, biotic factor, organism, stressors, environment, sampling.

Introduction

A bioindicator is the indication of a biotic factor taking effect on an ecosystem or environment, whether that is for good or bad.

What are Bioindicators?

A bioindicator is an organism that enables you to identify that an area within an ecosystem is in good quality or poor quality.

Being such a complex topic, bioindicators can provide an early warning system to scientists for areas that are being affected. The organisms involved can act as a natural gauge, showing us what is happening earlier than we can see ourselves.

Bioindicators can be used to determine public health issues and enables us to provide better public health policies and services.

Examples of Bioindicators

Examples of bioindicators include:

Air Indicators: an air bioindicator, such as moss or lichen, enables you to know that there is good air quality in the area. This is because moss and lichen doesn't like pollutants in the air, and will not grow in areas that have these pollutants (such as sulphur dioxide) present.

Water Indicators: small insects that are bottom-dwellers on the bedrock of a river or sea are good indicators of water quality. They will only survive or flourish when there is enough oxygen in the water, and also when there is no pollution present.

Soil Health: fertile soils are present when there is a high biodiversity of decomposers - insects, worms, fungi and bacteria - and this contributes to good soil health. They cycle the soil's organic matter and leave behind nutrients vital to plants' growth.

The Importance of Bioindicators

The point of bioindicators is that we can monitor them to make sure that we are protecting and maintaining the local environments that organisms live in, whether they are endangered or not.

They serve as an early warning system to changes that happen during a typical day, week or month with changes in things like salinity, pollutants, nutrient values and more. It enables regular people to take up environmental issues with local councils, due to the ease of access of these indicators. It is why there have been issues surrounding things like raw sewage being put into rivers and local residents being able to complain about them due to the wildlife reduction.