A study of bioindicator selection for long-term ecological monitoring

It is very useful and important to see the status and change of necessary parts in a short period through selecting and observing the bioindicator continually to forecast and prepare the future. Especially, living things are so closely related to the environment that the indicator between the environment and living things shows close interrelationship. Also, the indicator related to environment provides information about representative or decisive environmental phenomenon and is used to simplify complicated facts. Considering wide range of background and application including various indicators such as the change-, destruction-, pollution-, and restoration of habitats, climate change, and species diversity, the closest category includes “environmental indicator,” “ecological indicator,” and “biodiversity indicator.” The selection and use of bioindicator is complicated and difficult. The necessary conditions for the indicator selection are flexible and greatly depend on the goals of investigation such as the indicator for biological diversity investigation of specific area, the indicator for habitat destruction, the indicator for climate change, and the indicator for polluted area. It should meet many various conditions to select a good indicator. In this study, eleven selection standards are established based on domestic and overseas studies on bioindicator selection: species with clear classification and ecology, species distributed in geographically widespread area, species that show clear habitat characteristics, species that can provide early warning for a change, species that are easy and economically benefited for the investigation, species that have many independent individual groups and that is not greatly affected by the size of individual groups, species that is thought to represent the response of other species, species that represent the ecology change caused by the pressure of human influence, species for which researches on climate change have been done, species that is easy to observe, appears for a long time and forms a group with many individuals, and species that are important socially, economically, and culturally.