Valoración económica ambiental del agua de los balnearios del cantón Archidona con base en su calidad físico química y microbiológica.

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the changes in land cover for the Nagsiche river micro-basin of the Salcedo canton, for which Landsat 7 images corresponding to the years 2000, 2010 and 2020 were used and subjected to a supervised classification based on the maximum likelihood algorithm. The SemiAutomatic Classification Plugin was used, which identified five types of cover: herbaceous vegetation, páramo, agricultural land, forest and anthropic land; the results were validated using the kappa index, and both the gains and losses of cover were estimated for the 2000 periods. -2010; 2010-2020, using cross-tabulation matrices. For the first period, it was determined that the area with the most significant gain was agricultural land with (46.53%) while the páramo was the coverage that yielded more space with (36.11%); for the second period, it stands out the growth of the anthropic zone with (2.34%), compared to the páramo whose loss remained constant reaching (29.29%) generally replaced by agricultural land and pastures. The morphometric parameters of the basin show us an area of 257.207 km2, the main channel corresponding to the Nagsiche River has a length of 26.63 km2, and the Horton shape factor of 0.36 indicates that we are facing a non-elongated basin; it has a high drainage system with a drainage density of 0.65, synonymous with moderate erosive power. The hypsometric curve showed that we are facing a mature basin. It is recommended to complement these studies with field visits to implement environmental conservation mechanisms of the most vulnerable areas identified in the basin, such as the paramo source of vital resources for the agricultural and ecosystem development of the inhabitants who live in the study area