Monitoring water bodies related to El Quimbo Dam, Huila, Colombia

A monitoring was performed around water bodies associated to the El Quimbo Dam that is located on the Magdalena river, at the south of Huila Department, Colombia. This monitoring study was part of the Ecological Restoration Project of Tropical Dry Forest that is being executed by the Fundación Natura and Enel-Emgesa, which are joining efforts to restore ecosystems that have been affected by the construction of El Quimbo Dam. The construction of El Quimbo Dam began in February, 2011 and the dam was opened in 2015. It is suggested that construction of dams has caused upstream/downstream environmental impacts along river continuums, for example, along the Magdalena-Cauca basin. The Fundación Natura and Enel-Emgesa have been taking measures to mitigate the environmental impacts of El Quimbo Dam´s construction. One of these measures has been the reforestation of 40 km 2 of vegetation, to compensate the loss of 30 km 2 of vegetation that was cut down to construct the dam. The reforestation, performed by people from the Fundación Natura and Enel-Emgesa, is being developed in three specific zones around El Quimbo Dam. In 2016, the Fundación Natura performed previous studies of biotic and abiotic characterization of water reservoirs located in these three specific zones. Afterwards, in 2017, researchers from the Universidad Surcolombiana and Enel-Emgesa performed water quality studies on water bodies located in the high basin of Magdalena River. The present internship aimed at supplementing those studies executed in 2016 and 2017. During the present internship, biotic and abiotic aspects were analysed in 16 new water bodies to answer the following questions: -Are there differences in animal diversity among the 16 water bodies studied? -Is there similarity in the vegetation composition among the 16 water bodies? -Are there differences in abiotic conditions among the water bodies monitored? The 16 water bodies comprised 3 lakes and 13 streams. For all these water bodies, a field form was used, which consisted in a table organized in 8 columns. Each column contained data of depth, degree of shading, color of water, substrate, vegetation, fauna, water discharge (in the streams) and wind presence (in the lakes). A Shannon index was calculated to measure the fauna diversity along the 16 water bodies located around El Quimbo Dam. For vegetation, the number of trees was counted among the water bodies to find the richest ones in numbers of tree species. Analyses of similarity in composition of tree species were performed between pairs of water bodies as a well as a likely estimation of the most abundant tree species.Finally, environmental impacts of human activities were related to the animal diversity and abiotic aspects observed in the water bodies