Water Quality and Pollution

**3**

**Chapter 1**

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

Pollution Issues in Coastal Lagoons

*Alfonso Vazquez Botello, Guadalupe de la Lanza Espino,* 

The coastline of the Mexican Gulf of Mexico is an area of paramount importance. It poses valuable biological and ecological resources such as coastal lagoons, rivers, estuaries, wetlands and swamps. It poses 206 coastal systems including 73 coastal lagoons with high biological richness. Their study shows the physicochemical characteristics and pollution levels into the four more productive lagoons of Tampamachoco, Mandinga, Alvarado in the Veracruz state and Terminos Lagoon in Campeche state, México, have the present characteristics. The lagoons show a wide interval in physiochemical parameters (temperature: 18–32°C, salinity: 11–38 ups, and nutrients: oxygen 1.8–9.0 mg/L, total phosphorus 2.6–123 μM total

normal to eutrophication condition. The presence of PAHs and some of the high toxicity as anthracene, and chrysene, as well as naphthalene and its methyl derivatives has been reported. Also, chlorinated hydrocarbons used for agriculture purposes and malaria control (DDT, lindane, endosulfan) have been identified in these lagoons. Metals as Cr, Pb, Ni, Cd, and V among others were recently reported in the lagoons considered in this study. Concentrations of pollutants also show significant variations depending on the time and the type of lagoon, or estuary.

**Keywords:** Gulf of Mexico, coastal lagoons, physicochemical features, pollution, metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, pesticides, sediments, ecotoxicology, nutrients

One of the great problems of the coastal zone of the Gulf of Mexico is the diverse and significant water load of the different anthropogenic activities which have not taken into account the volume that must be conserved for the ecological services for which have been lost atmospheres of diverse biological wealth. The coastal flood plains in the Gulf, associated with coastal zones on the border with the terrestrial zone and the sea, are subject to flooding by rainfall, excess fluvial contribution that makeup dikes and channels but that play important roles in the coastal landscape and they contribute to the high production of the coastal zone, however; they run

The coastal zone associated with rivers, is interconnected by an extensive network of wetlands and floodplains temporary and perennial that allow the retention of water,

). All of them oscillated between

*Susana Villanueva Fragoso and Guadalupe Ponce Velez*

in the Gulf of Mexico

nitrogen 5–70 μM, and chlorophyll 10–50 mg/m3

**1.1 Main coastal lagoons in the Gulf of Mexico**

the risk of various deteriorations with or without recovery [1–6].
