ANÁLISIS DE LA PRESENCIA DE COMPUESTOS NITROGENADOS EN LOS SEDIMENTOS DEL ESTERO SAN CAMILO

Abstract

Guayas Province holds Ecuador´s largest urban population, with 3.645.483 inhabitants. This fact, as well as its geographical location, has triggered high levels of production in its regions, such as the case of Duran Canton. Factors like urbanism as well as agricultural and industrial development have altered the original and normal conditions of estuaries and other aquatic ecosystems. This paper presents the first evaluation of the presence of nitrites, nitrates and ammonium in San Camilo Estuary´s sediments during November 2015. Four stations were studied according to the economic activities developing at each zone. Three replicates of sediments sample were collected by Van Veen dredge. Results were a spatial variations of concentrations of nitrogen compounds was recorded. Nitrates (66.30 mg / kg) and nitrite (0.87 mg / kg) had the highest average concentrations in urban settlements stations. While the ammonium had the highest values in the station most influential contributions of agricultural areas. Significant differences with p <0.05 in the concentrations of nitrogen compounds were observed, the most similar stations 2 and 3 were characterized by proximity to urban settlements and principal component analysis showed that 96.8% of the variability among stations for the ammonium and nitrite variables explained.