Title: Environmental quality assessment of a tropical wetland contaminated by weathered hydrocarbon wastes

Authors: R. Uribe-Hernández; M.A. Amezcua-Allieri; M.A. Montes de Oca-García; J.A. Zermeño-Eguía Lis; V.E. Martínez-Martínez

Addresses: Dirección de Seguridad y Medio Ambiente, Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, Eje Central L. Cárdenas No. 152, Col. San Bartolo Atepehuacan, CP. 07730, Mexico ' Dirección de Seguridad y Medio Ambiente, Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, Eje Central L. Cárdenas No. 152, Col. San Bartolo Atepehuacan, CP. 07730, Mexico ' Dirección de Seguridad y Medio Ambiente, Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, Eje Central L. Cárdenas No. 152, Col. San Bartolo Atepehuacan, CP. 07730, Mexico ' Dirección de Seguridad y Medio Ambiente, Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, Eje Central L. Cárdenas No. 152, Col. San Bartolo Atepehuacan, CP. 07730, Mexico ' Dirección de Seguridad y Medio Ambiente, Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, Eje Central L. Cárdenas No. 152, Col. San Bartolo Atepehuacan, CP. 07730, Mexico

Abstract: In this work, was assessed the environmental quality of Santa Alejandrina wetland impacted by the Mexican oil industry. The assessment was achieved by conducting an analysis of variance between the content of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) and that of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), including the biological indexes for both flora and fauna. Significantly higher values (p <0.05) of richness and biodiversity were found in the control zone compared to contaminated zones. It was observed that the control zone had low concentrations of both TPH and PAH, which allows for the support of a greater number of species than in the rest of the contaminated zones. We conclude that biological indexes and concentrations of TPH and PAH are useful to determine the environmental degradation of a wetland associated to soil contaminated by weathered hydrocarbon wastes. We considered that the approach used in this study may be applied to other wetlands. [Received: March 27, 2014; Accepted: March 27, 2014].

Keywords: total petroleum hydrocarbons; TPH; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; PAH; soil contamination; weathered hydrocarbons; ecological index; tropical wetlands; environmental quality assessment; hydrocarbon waste; Mexico; oil industry; biodiversity; environmental degradation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2015.069655

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2015 Vol.9 No.4, pp.455 - 468

Received: 30 Apr 2013
Accepted: 27 Mar 2014
Published online: 29 May 2015 *

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