Proposal of an indicator of biological quality of water in the evaluation of sustainable land management (SLM) in Cuba

Abstract

The use of biological indicators for the evaluation of water quality is increasingly applied in the world due to the amount of information that can be obtained through aquatic organisms. Two of the most widely used freshwater organisms are phytoplankton and fishes, and although several studies show the use of these separately, their combination has not been much exploited. With the objective to determine water quality in sites under sustainable land management, an indicator of biological water quality was proposed, which included these two components of biodiversity. Work was done on the four intervention areas of the CPP-OP15 Country Association Program on Sustainable Land Management, 15 aquatories were evaluated during the diagnostic period between 2018 and 2019, in the rain and dry seasons. The integrated bioindicator revealed quality results between regular and good for all evaluated aquatories, which responded to the predominance of phytoplankton microorganisms typical of medium contamination as well as the presence of tolerant fish species. The analysis of these organisms to determine the quality of the water used for the irrigation of crops can be utilized as an effective demanda en los procesos productivos, sobre todo en la actividad de regadío de los cultivos en los sitios MST. Uno de los principios expuestos en el Manual de Procedimientos para el MST en Cuba, es implementar alternativas para asegurar el uso más efectivo y la condición óptima del agua, con el fin de evitar resultados catastróficos para los suelos, para los atributos de los productos y para la vida de los consumidores de estos productos (Urquiza et al., 2011).