Evaluation of ecosystem services based on amphibian community of the seven water springs in Malang Indonesia

Abstract

Better water spring conditions will directly impact the water quality that spread into the environment. Community structure can also be an indication of the state of the ecosystem services that can be provided by the water spring ecosystem. Therefore, we need to know the ecosystem condition of water springs based on their biota, such as amphibians. The target in this research was amphibians at seven water springs. A visual survey was carried out; then samples were recorded to calculate the community structure based on significant value, evenness, Shannon-wiener (diversity), and Margalef diversity index (species richness). On average, seven water springs show a low-indexed of diversity (0.9), 0.7 scores of evenness, and 0.9 scores for species richness. Four of 7 water springs are dominated by Chalcorana chalconota with 88% of Important value. The decreasing quality of an ecosystem can be revealed by the overview of community structure, such as a dominating species. It means that an insufficient number of predators in those areas, resulting in a flow of energy that is not going well. Therefore, based on the community structure analyses, we assume that Malang's water springs are experiencing ecosystem instability and high ecological pressure.