Avaliação da qualidade ecológica de ambientes aquáticos da bacia hidrográfica do Rio Itanhaém através da assembleia de macrófitas aquáticas: proposta para a formulação de um índice de integridade biótica

• Ano de defesa: 2016
• Autor(a) principal: Umetsu, Cristiane Akemi [UNESP]
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp)
• Palavras-chave em Português: Macrófitas aquáticas; Ecossistemas aquáticos; Ecologia aquatica; Monitoramento ambiental; Bacias hidrograficas; Aquatic macrophytes
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/11449/143041; http://www.athena.biblioteca.unesp.br/exlibris/bd/cathedra/14-07-2016/000866924.pdf

This study aimed to evaluate issues related to ecological quality of aquatic environments, with emphasis in aquatic macrophytes. Initially we developed a scientometric analysis in order to verify the global view of the studies dealing with ecological quality and index of biotic integrity (IBI), and try to provide an overview of ecosystems, organisms and regions that mostly used these indicators, as well as a critical analysis of the trends, applications and limitations of this approach. Our results indicate a lack of uniformity in the distribution of the number of studies by continent, mainly in tropical regions. Moreover, few studies have focused in more than one biological group to assess the ecological quality of aquatic environments. After, we used macrophyte aquatic data from Itanhaém River Basin, located in the south littoral of São Paulo State, to develop two more studies. First, we evaluated the influence of environmental variables on species richness and life form richness in order to verify which natural and anthropogenic factors are most important in structuring the plant assemblages. Both natural and anthropogenic factors were responsible for explaining the species richness and life forms richness in aquatic environments studied. Finally, we explored the use of macrophytes as indicators of the river ecological conditions in tropical rivers, in order to develop a multimetric IBI. Our results showed that the macrophyte assemblage structure is distinct in degraded and undisturbed sites, allowing the development of an IBI. Although the validation of the IBI has not shown good results, this study allowed a better understanding of ecological conditions in these aquatic environments and consists in a relevant contribution for future studies involving assessment and biomonitoring in tropical aquatic ecosystems