Avaliação da qualidade ambiental da Bacia do Rio Uberabinha através de um índice BMWP adaptado

Abstract

Aquatic ecosystems have suffered intense pressure from human activities. Studies on water quality are important because they may indicate possible environmental impacts, and how these impacts disturb the aquatic ecosystem and the organisms that live there. As the assessment of water quality through physical and chemical parameters are insufficient to determine the ecological status of water biological monitoring has been presented as an effective method in determining this quality because it uses the structure of communities related to the environment as an indicator the degree of degradation. Thus the aim of this study was to investigate the benthic community in Uberabinha River Basin to propose an adaptation of BMWP to the regional reality of this basin, with the intention of establishing an initial diagnosis of the waters of the Triângulo Mineiro region. 308,176 organisms were identified in 64 taxa in the 28 sampling sites, of these, 6,145 distributed in 22 families belonged to the families of EPT. Among the points collected three were considered with excellent water quality, nine were considered of good quality, eight were considered satisfactory, seven had a poor quality of water and only one point was considered of terrible quality. When evaluating the points located on the Uberabinha river basin from the perspective of microrregions, then a tendency becomes clear by BMWP-TRI, where most of the points located upstream of the city were rated good to fair water, while most of the points on the perimeter urban and downstream of the city were classified as poor or very poor in relation to water quality. Through the results obtained by biomonitoring, we emphasize that the methodology adopted, was able to show changes in water quality conditions quite well. The score and rating points during the study period showed degradation processes in the studied environments.