TY  - BOOK
AU  - Ndaruga, A. Macharia
TI  - A comparative study of influence of land use types on riverine macrozoobenthic diversity: a case study of river gatharaini, Kiambu district
AV  - QH91.8.N43 2000 
N2  - Habitats and landscapes always experience dynamic changes due to influence of biotic and abiotic factors. Similarly, some species have always gone extinct. However, today the rate of environmental changes and species extinction has greatly accelerated due to incresed direct and indirect human influences.
Today, economic forces control human exploitation of both living and non-living natural resources. It is important to understand the economic - ecological interaction of this exploitatioon. Most of the economic processes are much faster than most of the ecological processes (Stenseth 1992). Thus rather compicated and unexpected dynamic behavoiour may emerge from such interactions (Stenseth and Maynard - Smith 1984)
Ecologists generally focus more on the study of dynamic changes resulting from perturbations around an equilibrium (Maynard - Smith 1974). Economists howeveoften aim to find equilibriumconditions rather than studfy the dynamic changes after perturbation ffrom an equilibrium (AArrow et al 1960, Lancaster 1968).
This study therefore intends to analyze effects of land use, types on the water quality and biodiversity along river Gatharaini. For water quality mesurements, the parameters to be considered include; dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD),PH,, conductivity, temperature and turbidity. Macrozoobenthic diversity will also be established. This will be done by collecting the sediment mud and screening it for presence of macrozoobenthos. These organisms will be identified, classified and their abundance and diversity determined. Other parameters to be considered include the water velocity and the sediment particle sizes.
ER  -