Avaliação de impacto ambiental gerado pelas UHEs do Rio Madeira com base em aspectos funcionais de bioindicadores aquáticos.

Abstract

Renewable energy sources have been expanding globally in recent years, hydroelectric being the one that has gained the most prominence in this environment. Brazil has become one of the countries that has invested the most in hydroelectric power plants as the main source of energy for years, due to their low cost and low maintenance requirements. Proposals for actions to minimize the environmental impacts subgenerated by these constructions are employed by companies, however, whether such proposals have been presenting real effectiveness still generates discussion. For these reasons, the work presented here sought to understand the environmental impacts generated by the construction of two large plants in the Amazon region, in the Rio Madeira Basin. For this purpose, the data of fish landings from downstream, being the Port of Humaitá and the data from upstream, being the port of Guajará-Mirim from the years 2002 to 2019 were used. The fish were grouped according to their functional characteristics, their migration and their habitat, in order to compare the before and after the construction of the plants in the groups and analyze which suffered the most with this construction. The regional migration species were the ones that presented the biggest decline in both ports after the construction of the dams, in Humaitá the decline was 85.5% and in Guajará-Mirim the fall was 51.63%. For the habitat, the benthopelagic species were the most affected, with a decrease of 70.55% in Humaitá and 51.30% in Guajará-Mirim. At the end of this monograph, we hope to contribute to the future management of socio-environmental programs that have been adopted by the hydroelectric power plants in Brazil, so that they cover the species that are really being affected by the construction of hydroelectric power plants; and take into consideration the economic factor added to them, since fisheries is a source of food and income for Amazonian communities.