Abstract
The Sakarya River basin is one of the largest basins in Turkey, and encompasses the Kocaeli, Düzce, Sakarya, Bursa, Bilecik, Bolu, Kütahya, Eskişehir, Ankara, Afyon, and Konya provinces. In this study, the water quality status of the basin was investigated using 18 diatom indices, calculated in Omnidia software. For this purpose, a total of 46 stations were surveyed in the rivers and streams of the basin in May 2018. As a result, 41 of 195 diatom taxa were found to be the most frequent (>10% share in assemblage). According to Detrented Correspondence Analysis (DCA), three subgroups were described as the spring section, Ankara and Polatlı section, and lowland section. The river basin quality was evaluated as moderate or lower quality status, while only a few sites had good status. The diatom index scores showed that the Descy’s Index (DES), Pampean Diatom Index (IDP), Artois-Picardie Diatom Index (IDAP), and Specific Pollution Sensitivity Index (IPS) appear best suited to water quality assessment in this area, showing the largest number of significantly important correlation with environmental variables.
Highlights
Biological and physico-chemical monitoring have been applied in order to detect the effects of human activities on aquatic environments [1]
The Sakarya River flows through the Anatolia region (Turkey), and has a length of 824 km
The Sakarya River basin is very diverse in terms of land usage and numerous factors e.g., industrial and domestic discharges, and agricultural runoffs may affect the diatom assemblages
Summary
Biological and physico-chemical monitoring have been applied in order to detect the effects of human activities on aquatic environments [1]. Water quality assessment base on physicochemical analyzes is determine the water quality only at the time of measurement. This is why, such assessment is incomplete and inaccurate because water parameters may change fast over a short time. Biological monitoring allow to analyze of this constantly changing of physical and chemical characteristics of the water, giving a real reflection of conditions in. The use of diatoms in assessment of lotic and lentic waters, paleoenvironmental reconstructions, and climate studies was started in the 1970s [4,5]
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