Contribution to the Study of Water Pollution in the Nunez River estuary, (Republic of Guinea)

Abstract

Bauxite mining offers an important livelihood strategy, a source of economic and social development relevant to countries with this natural wealth. It emerges, from the observations and extensive bibliographical reviews, that this exploitation has direct impacts on estuarine ecosystems through the establishment of ports and mining industries, hence our research theme "Contribution to the study of the impacts of industrial activities on the estuarine ecosystem of the Nunez River" In addition, the observation on the ground tells us that despite the efforts made by the authorities through the competent institutions and the investors, reducing the environmental impacts generated by this mining operation often has problems and insufficient capacity to deal with them, as revealed by our study conducted on the Nunez estuary. The hypothesis of this theme can be summarized as follows: The negative effects of the major pollutants of the Nunez River estuary due to the installation of industrial units, associated with the impacts related to climate change in the locality contribute to the dysfunction of the estuary, in turn to the reduction of opportunities and ecosystem services offered by the Nunez River. Nevertheless, given the high variability of the recorded values of the physicochemical parameters of the estuarine waters (temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, turbidity, salinity, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, nitrite, dissolved solids, suspended solids and phosphate) it seemed necessary to study them. Eleven sampling sites served as a study framework, the CERE/UGANC laboratory, as an analytical framework. Keywords: Industrial activities, estuarine ecosystems, environmental impacts, pollution.