Publication Date
Fall 2025
Abstract
Gold mining is rapidly expanding in the upper Jatunyacu River basin of the Ecuadorian Amazon, an ecologically and culturally important region where Indigenous Kichwa communities depend on streams for drinking water, agriculture, and fisheries. This study assessed the ecological condition of five tributary streams across a variety of land uses: primary forest, chakra agroforestry, a stream recovering from historical mining, and a stream downstream of active small-scale gold mining. Benthic macroinvertebrates were collected and identified to morphospecies, and hydromorphological parameters, biodiversity indices, beta diversity metrics, and two biotic indices (AAMBI and BMWP/Col) were used to evaluate ecological integrity. Results showed a clear difference in stream condition: sites in primary forest and agroforestry systems exhibited high richness, abundance, and biological index scores, while the actively mined site showed extremely low diversity and was consistently the most dissimilar from all others. Site 2, a well-preserved agroforestry stream, had the highest biodiversity across nearly all metrics, underscoring the ecological value of traditional chakra systems. Site 4, historically impacted by a small-scale mine, exhibited strong evidence of recovery, with sensitive taxa dominating the assemblage. Turnover-based beta diversity revealed distinct community composition among sites, while abundance-based metrics highlighted sharper contrasts driven by mining impacts. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that active gold mining severely degrades aquatic ecosystems, while agroforestry and intact riparian vegetation support high ecological integrity and may facilitate post-mining recovery. This research provides one of the first macroinvertebrate assessments in an upstream reach of the Jatunyacu basin and establishes a baseline for monitoring future mining expansion in Talag.
Disciplines
Life Sciences
Recommended Citation
Chae, Clara, "The price of gold: Macroinvertebrate responses to mining in the upper Jatunyacu River" (2025). Ecuador: Comparative Ecology and Conservation. 7.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/ece/7