Construction of an interdisciplinary geographic information system (G.I.S.) of the Guayaquil area in order to the monitoring and modelling of the Guayas estuary and the Estero Salado.

This project intends to study the marine transitional environments of the Guayas estuary and Estero Salado in the vicinity of Guayaquil city. The natural set-up of the area, man induced phenomena, and the environmental equilibrium between the two will be focused in order to get to know:
the sediment accumulation function of space and time,
the benthic communities in spatial and temporal evolution;
which sites are more suitable for pollution based on the sediment's characteristics;
which sites are effectively retaining pollutants: organic and inorganic;
how the dynamic actual equilibrium cycles the input of different kinds of waste in the systems.

Different techniques of analysis will provide information concerning the several aspects involved in understanding these concerns. The KBIN, NIOZ and VUB (ELEC) will mainly focus on physical and chemical characteristics regarding sediments either in suspension or as part of the geological record. They will provide the spatial and temporal (last years) information that will serve as a frame to locate the other approaches of this study. For the water column, the ESPOL and INOCAR will provide the physico-chemical frame of interest. The VUB (ECOLOGY) will approach the organic pollutant aspect of these sediments and the ESPOL will do for the inorganic part. ESPOL and INOCAR will also take care of the biological aspect together with the Marine biology laboratory of the UG.

Fluxes of energy and organic matter through food webs are key processes in estuarine ecosystems. Different ecosystem compartments (benthos, plankton and nekton) are in continuous interaction with each other and with the abiotic environment. Benthic communities are very suitable for monitoring purposes. They are abundant throughout the year and since they only perform limited migrations, they can yield an integrated picture of long term pollution. Moreover, their habitat (marine sediments) are known to function as sinks for a variety of pollutants. Therefore, the proposed study of benthic organisms in the Guayas estuary will provide basic ecological data to the GIS system as well as a pollution monitoring tool.

It is known indeed that separate efforts do not manage to explain the occurrence of a certain phenomena. This proposal pretends to arrive to a serious understanding of the geo-biochemical evolution of the systems by integrating the several geo-biochemical information that so closely relate to each other in setting the equilibrium of these transitonal marine systems.