‘metrix’: An R package for assessing the biological quality of water

CABRERA, JUAN M.; CAPELETTI, JULIETA

ECOLOGICAL MODELLING

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2023 vol. 484

0304-3800

The monitoring of biological indicators is necessary to evaluate water quality. Macroinvertebrate-based biomonitoring tools, such as simple metrics and biotic indices, are widely used to assess biological water quality.However, the growing availability of ecological data has not been accompanied by the development of processing tools that can facilitate data handling and analysis. These analyses, although not mathematically complex, can be prone to errors, especially when dealing with large databases. To address this issue, we introduce‘metrix’, a free and open-source R package for the calculation of metrics and biotic indices for macroinvertebrate samples. This package provides a straightforward method for data manipulation, as it relies on preset spread sheets. It does not require the use of other software or packages and can be easily modified, making it suitable fornon-programming users.