Abstract
Karst groundwater is the major natural resource of drinking water for many countries in the world. Especially in karstic regions, karst water requirements for settlements are provided from karst aquifers. Also, we should consider, that karst groundwater is becoming more and more valuable for drinking water supply. Thus, karst groundwater quality and permanent ecological monitoring are very important for populations. Moreover, if we consider that the karst landscape is the extremely sensitive system towards anthropogenic activities, since exaclty the anthropogenic activities largely identify the karst water pollution-turbidity causing factors. This paper presents a new study regarding the quality of the karst groundwater of the study area, which contains important resource of drinking water. In the mentioned study, 12 water samples were collected from different locations of the 4 main karst springs (Krikhula, Dolabistavi, Kidobana and Sakishore) during the spring and summer of 2014 and 2015 years. The main aim was to identify chemical compositions (Ni, Ag, Co, Cd, Zn, Pb, Al, Mg, Fe, F, Cu), and also, it was important to detect Escherichia coli (E. coli). Our research regarding all these chemical compositions shows that all the values are low and under the environmental limit according to the Georgian standards. We measured chemical parameters of all these samples by Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS) in the chemical laboratory of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, country of Georgia.
Highlights
Nowadays, for many countries, a major resource of drinking water is karst groundwater
We present a new study of karst groundwater including geochemical compositions in the Racha limestone massif, where karst groundwater is one of the most important sources of drinking water, which represents considerable natural resource for the study area
The study revealed that the heavy metal content in the karst waters does not exceed the Environmental limits, which makes possible to use the karst springs as drinking water
Summary
For many countries, a major resource of drinking water is karst groundwater. Millions of people are provided by drinking water from karst aquifers, which contain valuable freshwater resources, and karst groundwater plays a crucial role for economic development of various countries and regions [1] [2]. Groundwater contamination is the most concern problem in karstic regions around the world. Karst groundwater is a potentially faster contaminated freshwater resources, due to increasing population density, rapid urbanization, as well as domestic and industrial usage [8]-[13]. Karst groundwater quality and permanent ecological monitoring are very important, because the hydrochemical investigation provides significant information about water quality and characteristics of karst system [14] [15] [16] [17]
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