Services on Demand
Journal
Article
Indicators
- Cited by SciELO
Related links
- Similars in SciELO
- uBio
Share
Ecología austral
On-line version ISSN 1667-782X
Abstract
GOMEZ, Nora and COCHERO, Joaquín. Un índice para evaluar la calidad del hábitat en la Franja Costera Sur del Río de la Plata y su vinculación con otros indicadores ambientales. Ecol. austral [online]. 2013, vol.23, n.1, pp.18-26. ISSN 1667-782X.
An index to assess the habitat quality in Southern Coastal Fringe of the Río de la Plata and its relations with other environmental indicators: Evaluating the coastal environment is a necessary task to assess the ecological status of water bodies, which allows to determine the merits of management programs, anthropogenic impacts, or to detect early signs of environmental impacts. To this purpose, the objective of this research was to develop a methodology to assess the habitat quality in the Franja Costera Sur of the Río de la Plata. The information obtained from 21 sampling sites, visited from 2005 to 2008, is summarized and simplified in an index, named the Habitat Index for the Río de la Plata (IHRPlata). To obtain the index four separate descriptors are to be evaluated: 1) the spatial succession of the vegetation, 2) any man-introduced infrastructures in the coast, 3) the presence of litter and debris in the coastline, and 4) the visualization of biological indicators that imply oxygen deficit. According to the obtained values for the IHRPlata, 32% of the analyzed cases revealed a very good habitat quality, 20% good, 24% moderate, 18% bad and 6% very bad habitat quality. The obtained values were also significantly correlated with parameters related to water quality and to biotic indicators, which strengthens its usefulness to evaluate the coastal habitat.
Keywords : Monitoring; Riverside; Anthropogenic disturbance.