SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF WATER QUALITY OF GOKOVA BAY

Abstract

Gokova Bay is located on the southwest of Turkey and on the southeast of Aegean Sea. In this study, some physico-chemical parameters of seven selected stations along the northern coastal line of Gokova Bay were investigated monthly between November 2014 and October 2015. Water temperature (oC), pH, dissolved oxygen (DO, mg L-1), saturated oxygen (SO, %), electrical conductivity (EC, µScm-1), salinity (%o), solid suspended matter (SSM, mg L-1),ortho-phosphate (PO43-, mg L-1), nitrite nitrogen (NO2-N, mg L-1), ammonium nitrogen (NH4+-N, mg L-1), nitrate nitrogen (NO3-N, mg L-1), total phosphorus (TP, mg L-1), biological oxygen demand (BOD5, mg L-1) and chlorophyll-a (Chl-a, mg L-1) were water variables which analyzed during the study. The differences between sampling stations and the differences between sampling periods were determined by ANOVA and both factors resulted in a statistically significant difference for SO and BOD5 variables. The interconnection among the water variables were also determined by correlation (Pearson) analysis. The correlation between EC and salinity and the correlation between BOD5 and DO were found statistically significant and these two correlations were modeled through the best fit regression method. The result of the study indicates that water quality degradation increases due to environmental pollution caused by intense tourism, overuse of coastal lines, maintenance of ships and daily ship trips.