Pequenos corpos d’água: cienciometria e avaliação ecológica

Abstract

Water courses that have small dimensions are called small water bodies. Springs are essential aquatic systems to life´s maintenance, besides having high ecological and economic value. As an object of multidisciplinary study, the springs can be analyzed with focus on different study areas. In this context, the first chapter has as goal to measure the publications about springs located in Brazilian territory and perform their scientometric analysis. 75 papers were found, published from 1981 to 2021 and the studies carried out in the Brazilian Southeast region were the most plentiful. The results also demonstrate that the aim of most studies was to analyzed the quality of the water emerging from the springs. It is necessary that the different knowledge areas get integrated, so as to progress and direct greater efforts, in order to fill gaps in studies about springs. The different environmental conditions resulting from the mesohabitats and land uses around the streams can interfere in the structure and composition of the oligochaete fauna, widely used as indicators of aquatic ecosystems. The objective of the second chapter was to evaluate and compare the oligochaete fauna found in mesohabitats of rapids and backwaters in streams with different land uses in their proximity (forested, urban and pasture). A significant difference in the oligochaete fauna was found in the different mesohabitats and land uses. Conductivity, width, and depth were important variables in the separation between backwaters and rapids. Aulophorus furcatus was the species associated with urban environments, Pristina jenkinae to rapids and Opistocysta funiculus, Limnodrilus hoffmeisteri and juvenile Tubificinae were linked to backwaters. The results found may contribute to understanding the relationship between the structure and composition of the oligochaete fauna, the mesohabitats and land use.