Abstract
Analysing the physicochemical characteristics of water and soil in conservation areas gives information about their quality and the effective management strategies wildlife conservationists could adopt. The study assessed thephysicochemical characteristics of selected perennial rivers and soil samples in Old Oyo National Park, Nigeria. A totalof 24 composited surface water and 36 topsoil samples were collected using grab and random sampling techniques,respectively for four seasons (two dry and two wet) for two consecutive years (2017 and 2018). The samples were analysed for selected physicochemical characteristics using standard methods. Data collected were subjected to descriptive and inferential (ANOVA) statistics SPSS (version 20.0) at α0.05. The result showed that the mean values (in the water samples) of Total Suspended Solids (673.13±592.10) in dry season 2018, Total Solids (799.37±610.17) in dry season 2018, and Sulphate (469.34±354.94) in dry season 2017 were above the comparable WHO permissible limit while the mean values (in the soil samples) of total nitrogen (except dry season 2018), exchangeable Magnesium and Potassium (across all the seasons) were above the comparable critical limits. There were significant differences in all the physicochemical characteristics of water sampled [except pH (P=0.12), chloride (P=0.96) and BOD (P=0.86)] while organic carbon (P=0.047), organic matter (P=0.041), nitrogen (P=0.020), calcium (P=0.016), total exchangeable bases (P=0.009) and effective cation exchange capacity (P=0.033) in soils were significantly different across the seasons of sampling. The soil physicochemical parameters above comparable critical limits may have elicited from the impact of anthropogenic activities by the surrounding communities with possible implication on wild animal health in the park.
Highlights
Water is one of the most important and essential natural resources that exists on our planet and is essential for survival of both aquatic and terrestrial organisms (Swaleh and Usmani, 2016)
Physicochemical Characteristics of water Samples: The result of dry season, 2017 showed that the sampled rivers’ temperatures, sulphate levels in all the rivers and the electrical conductivity (River Ogun) were above the WHO permissible limit as shown in Table 2 while in the wet season of 2017, only the pH of River Sooro was above the WHO permissible limit (Table 3)
Of noteworthy is the fact that the mean levels of physicochemical parameters during the dry seasons were higher than those of the wet seasons while statistically, there were significant differences in all the physicochemical parameters of water sampled except pH, chloride and Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) that had no significant differences (Table 6)
Summary
Water is one of the most important and essential natural resources that exists on our planet and is essential for survival of both aquatic and terrestrial organisms (Swaleh and Usmani, 2016). The importance of water as a resource is tied to its availability and quantity and to its quality. Soil is a complex and dynamic ecosystem whose functionality is related to the links that exist between physical, chemical, and biological properties as well as resident microbial communities (Furtak et al, 2019). It is an important abiotic component of the environment whose availability is crucial to the existence of living organisms. The quality of soil in a given environment is often defined by its physical, chemical, biochemical as well as microbial characteristics (Furtak and Gajda, 2018). Even though plant composition may alter the soil physical and chemical properties, which in turn disturbs land efficiency (Singh et al, 2011), their growth depends on the physicochemical properties and organic matter content of the soil to a very large extent (Alsumaiti et al, 2018)
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