Determinación de la calidad de agua en la cuenca baja del río de Paute contrastando parámetros físico químicos y biológicos (diatomeas epilíticas)

Abstract

The study of water bodies is of vital interest in environmental studies, the main form of study has been through physical-chemical analysis, however, biological components have been neglected. The use of diatom species as biological indicators to establish the quality of surface waters has proven to be an efficient, fast, and low-cost method. The present study applies biological variables to analyze the environment, through the use of bioindicators whose presence, abundance or behavior shows the health of the environment (Bonada, Prat, Resh, & Statzner, 2006). When analyzing the results, it was determined that the diatom communities found in the rivers studied are the result of the interaction of the variables that characterize the presence of organic matter and the presence or absence of nitrogen in the study areas, including the availability of nutrients and anthropogenic intervention. At the points studied, the physical-chemical parameters do not coincide with the biological bioindicators present in the Paute River Basin that determine water quality. This is in spite of the fact that the water quality was good when using both methods. The canonical correspondence analysis showed that the species determined as bioindicators were not present together with the vectors that determined a high presence of species. According to the IPS, the biological quality of 5 of the 6 areas studied was determined to be good. However, area A2 reports a slight decline within the values presented by the IPS, which could show the degradation of the area. It has been determined that the rivers studied with oligotrophic due to the low amount of NO2, NO3 and NH3 found so it could be deduced that the low diversity of the area is due to this factor, so most of the areas studied are monospecific.