Influência do ambiente na comunidade de macroinvertebrados bentônicos no Rio Uberaba/MG

Resumo (EN)

The Uberaba River suffers from anthropogenic influence along its path. Pollution changes watercourses physicochemical parameters and hence changes the benthic fauna, what makes this community a good bioindicator of environmental quality and integrity. The study aimed at verifying the water quality of the Uberaba River in two stations, being Station 1 (P1) near the water catchment area of Uberaba City, and Station 2 (P2) further downstream, where Uberaba River has received diffuse pollution from wastewater disposal. The water quality was measured against both biological and physicochemical parameters. The benthic macroinvertebrates community based the biological assessment in which analysis of diversity indexes in artificial substrates were carried out. It was concluded that there are changes between the stations, given that parameters indicative of degradation, such as electrical conductivity, presented values of 73 and 298 μS/cm, in Stations 1 and 2, respectively. Also, the richness index (P1 = 18, P2 = 8), total density (P1 = 442, P2 = 664), total EPT (P1 = 215, P2 = 0), and Simpson index (P1 = 0.208; P2 = 0.402) presented considerable variation between the points, emphasizing pollution of the watercourse. Individuals from Class Oligochaeta and Family Chironomidae had a dominance of 84.25% in Station 2, and as both of them are resistant to pollution, they appear with high densities in degraded environments causing low diversity in the area.