RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WATER QUALITY AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF BIRDLIFE IN THE PETREL WETLAND

Abstract

It’s exposed the relationship between the birdlife’s distribution and water quality from Petrel Wetland, Pichilemu. Due to the fact that this place used to be the main focus of the sewage waters discharge for the last decades and yet, some studies affirm that it surprisingly hides a tremendous birdlife diversity. It could be appreciated that the bird’s species did not present a homogeneous distribution in the place of study, which was hypothetically attributed to the water quality. So it was sought to determine the relation between birdlife’s distribution and the water quality. In order to accomplish that, there were carried out biweekly birdlife’s monitorings simultaneous to water’s sampling, which were analyzed later by its physical-chemical parameters to determine the water quality. This was put into action between the months of May to August 2017. It is concluded that, according to the measured parameters, the water had a low quality, which means that it’s not adequated to the conservation of aquatic communities and, moreover, this had no influence on the birdlife’s distribution, but it did have an influence in the presence and absence of birds belonging to the Anatidae and Rallidae families. Despite the fact that 75% of the wetland’s water was evaluated as low quality, this presents high ecology diversity’s index reaching in average between the studied months 0, 92 for Simpson and 2, 9 for Shannon – Weaver.