Caracterización del medio físico para la determinación de las áreas de protección hídrica del río Caimatan en el cantón Cañar.

Abstract

Caimatan River provides water to the communities from the San Antonio parish, which use this resource for daily activities, such as irrigation and domestic usage. The water´s quality is compromised because of the high anthropic intervention and land-use change between the upstream and downstream of the river´s micro-basin. Therefore, an assessment of the water´s quality was necessary. By using the National Sanitation Foundation´s Water Quality Index, carried out through sampling at three different points of the river, each one with different environmental conditions, such as altitude and temperature, which affected final results. Besides the water quality assessment, Segarra is methodology from 2017, to determine water protection areas was applied. This methodology started with a soil assessment that identifies areas in which anthropic activities are being done inside fragile territory. APH assessment results point out higher priority areas, which make up to 16,65 % (947,69 ha) of the total influence area (5690.75 ha) and are located on high resource offer, demand and vulnerability areas, distributed mainly on the high part (upstream) of the microbasin on ecosystems high importance for the hydrological cycle; results point out that water quality ranged from good to medium.