Air Quality and Its Relationship with the Community Birds from the Sierra de Guadalupe, México

The air quality in Mexico City (CDMX) is currently evaluated by the Air and Health Index (AHI), which does not consider the joint effect of the mixed pollutants, neither the damage to biodiversity. The development of an index that evaluates these effects and the use of atmospheric dispersion and trajectory models such as the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory Model (HYSPLIT) supports the design of an Integrated Air Quality Index (IAQI). This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between bird diversity and air quality, based on a pollutant analysis and the IAQI at the Sierra de Guadalupe, CDMX, Mexico (SG-CDMX). A bird census was conducted at SG-CDMX (Jan-Feb 2020). The values of structural and functional diversity of communities and AHI of CO, O₃, Particulate Matter (PM) PM_2.5, and PM₁₀ were obtained. The relationship between bird diversity and the IAQI proposed was assessed with a Principal Component Analysis. The HYSPLIT model was computed using satellite images. Heat maps of AHI and weather parameters were developed with QGIS. Southern sector sites reached the highest IAQI and AHI values, which were associated with the higher vehicular influx and industrial activity (IAQI increased when air quality was lower). While the northern sites presented the highest values of structural diversity and air quality, these sites have conservation land use and lower anthropogenic activity. Furthermore, the HYSPLIT model shows that the trajectories and movement of particles are from southwest to northeast.