Índices bióticos mono e multimétricos de avaliação da qualidade da água em riachos da Mata Atlântica

• Autor(a) principal: Yoshida, Claudia Eiko
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Uieda, Virginia Sanches [UNESP]
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://periodicos.puc-campinas.edu.br/seer/index.php/bioikos/article/view/2292; http://hdl.handle.net/11449/137285
• topic: Cabreúva; Hábitat diversity; Jundiaí; Macroinvertebrates; Headwaters; Cabreúva; Diversidade de hábitat; Jundiaí; Macroinvertebrados; Nascentes

Protocols for rapid habitat evaluation and the biotic indices used in biomonitoring of streams in Brazil provide useful information about water quality and modifications in the ecosystem. However, the interpretation of their results is limited. Previous studies pointed out the low sensitivity of those indices to measure the quality of low-order streams, since they only measure organic impacts. Environmental degradation of these streams is mainly related to impacts caused by landscape change, such as erosion, siltation, channel change, loss of riparian vegetation, and reduction in water flow. The streams of the Serra do Japi are under some of these impacts, caused by agricultural activities. In this study, we evaluated whether the reduction of natural characteristics in these environments would decrease water quality. The Protocol of Habitat Diversity was affected by the impacts of agricultural activities. However, the other three biotic indices: Biological Monitoring Working Party Score System, Average Score Per Taxon, and Index of Benthic Community were not as sensitive to those impacts, since they all indicated a high water quality. An adaptation of the attributes and the scoring system is suggested for defining better policies for the conservation of this area.