Dr. Jeninah Atwebembeire

ABSTRACT

River Rwizi is the major source of water for South Western Uganda. Only short-term studies have been done recently over a small area of the river Rwizi around the dominantly urban Mbarara City leaving most of the rural catchment relatively unstudied. These studies have mainly focused on the physical chemical status of the river ecosystem showing high degradation of the catchment and unacceptable high levels of dissolved nutrient loads and other pollutants from urban waste. The main objective is to build capacity of lectures, students and local communities to identify and select key water pollution bio indicators and develop models for long-term water quality monitoring of River Rwizi watersheds. The study will be done to cover the river Rwizi catchment that transcends through seven districts of Mbarara City, Bushenyi, Sheema, Buhweju, Ntungamo, Isingiro and Mitooma in Southwestern Uganda. Sampling will include water quality through analysis of physico-chemical, biological including microbiol, macrobenthos and periphyton and environmental parameters together with participatory approaches by communities through Bioblitz-Citizen Science and Field School Approaches. This study seeks to create a comprehensive long-term information system on the entire R. Rwizi catchment area using physicochemical, benthic macro-invertebrate, and bacteriological parameters as indicators of pollution to address the major socio-ecological gap identified in our previous studies on water quality profiles of River Rwizi.