Briófitos y líquenes epífitos como indicadores de la calidad de aire en zonas rurales y urbanas de la ciudad de Ambato

Abstract

Abstract:Air pollution is one of the main environmental problems in developed and low-income countries. To face this problem, bryophytes and lichens have been proposed as reliable indicators to detect environmental disturbances because their physiological structure allows them to accumulate polluting substances that can be measured and analyzed. In this research, we evaluated Ambato´s air quality by analyzing the presence and abundance of bryophytes and lichens as accumulation indicators, for which we selected areas with different land uses. We picked 10 trees per zone to register the frequency and coverage in a 10 x 50 cm surface. Differences in richness were established using a generalized linear model (GLM) and changes in species composition were studied with non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and permutation-based multivariate analysis (PERMANOVA). Species richness was higher in the control zone where less amount of air pollutants is presumed, and the community s composition varied between different zones. The diversity of species made it possible to identify a higher air quality in the control zone.