Propuesta de manejo y conservación para la microcuenca del río illangama, Cantón Guaranda

Abstract

Due to the pressure and spreading of soils to benefit agricultural production, the protection areas and paramos have been complicated, specifically the area corresponding to the Illangama River micro-basin, which does not have studies and data that serve as support to propose projects that identify the main measures and actions to be taken into consideration for its protection. This research aimed to design a management and conservation plan for the Illangama River micro-watershed. This research has a qualitative-quantitative approach; the research was exploratory, descriptive, and non-experimental. The bibliographic review was used to determine the physical environment of the study area; the Landsat 7 satellite image of the area was used with the Geographic Information Systems (ArcGIS). The protection perimeter of the micro-basin and joint parameters such as area, perimeter, basin length, basin width, Horton shape factor, compactness coefficient, elongation ratio, height, elevation and slope were calculated. As main results, a management and conservation plan for the micro-basin was designed, a surplus of chlorides was determined in the upper and middle zones, the perimeter of water protection was delimited, being 100 m around the main river, another strategy is the creation of a financial conservation mechanism. It is concluded that the population that settles in the study area lives in the countryside, agriculture, and livestock; therefore, it is vital to conserve water resources with reforestation techniques such as analogue forestry and implement silvopastoral systems with native species of the sector. These strategies are friendly to the environment and, at the same time, help in the economic support of families.