Determinación de la calidad del agua mediante indicadores biológicos y físico-químicos en el río Cutuchi, cantón Latacunga, provincia Cotopaxi

Abstract

The present investigation determined the water quality through the physical-chemical and biological parameters, in the Cutuchi river located in Latacunga Canton, where three sampling points were identified, start, middle and end of the river with three repetitions per sampling point. In this section of the river the discharge of household, industrial and general hospital pollutant waste of Latacunga was presented, the presence of livestock was also evident.Once the samples were collected, they were taken to the laboratory of the Salesian Polytechnic University for macroinvertebrate identification and physico-chemical parameters. To verify the results obtained from the biological indicators, 10 physicochemical parameters were analyzed: PH, temperature and conductivity were analyzed in situ and for alkalinity, hardness, turbidity, OD, COD, BOD5 and POR by laboratory analysis at the three sampling points, these analyses showed that points 1 and 2 show variations in their results which for certain parameters are not within the permissible limits described in the standard. Point 3 is the one that presents moderate variations in its parameters, complying with the permissible limits for water quality. In the macroinvertebrates in the BMWP/Col index the value of 13 was obtained, for the ETP index no families of Ephmeroptera, Plecótepra and Thichoptera were found, which means that in these two indices the river is strongly contaminated. In order to determine the diversity of macroinvertebrates in the three points of the river the Shannon index is used, a weight lower than 0 was obtained, this value shows that the diversity at each point of the river is very low.