Characterization Of Water Bodies Research Articles

Water quality of streams associated with artisanal gold mining; Suárez, Department of Cauca, Colombia

Gold mining is one of the major problems of contamination of hydric resources in Colombia, this practice generates a high impact on water quality due to the accumulation of waste during its process. In this study water quality was evaluated in five natural stream beds corresponding to four streams with gold mining operations and one in the Cauca River, taking samples before the water inlet and after the outlet in each operation in the streams of Dios Te Dé, Tamboral, Piedra Imán, and Lorenzo affected by artisanal gold mining labor, which drain into the Salvajina Reservoir on the Cauca River in the municipality of Suárez Cauca, Colombia. Characterization of water bodies in the streams was carried out applying contamination indices of Colombia. The IDEAM protocol was used as guide to monitor the water currents. Samples were taken in 15 stations in the natural stream beds with operations and a sampling station on the Cauca River after the reservoir in these lotic ecosystems, during three periods; two from 2018 and one from 2019. The range of the contamination indices according to the environmental variables were considered. Results show that the contaminants associated with TSS, TUR, and Hg are high in the sampling stations in the output of the operations and the sampling stations of the streams with influence on the operations (T3, T4, I2, I3, D2, and D5). The water quality score according to the ICA IDEAM index varied between acceptable and regular in the different sampling stations. However the Hg concentration in sampling station C1 of the Cauca River is due to contributions from the operations in the amalgamation process. This requires strategic interventions by the communities, miners, operation owners, and control organisms as the Regional Autonomous Corporation of Cauca (CRC) and the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MADS) to minimize the negative impacts on the hydric resource and ecosystemic services associated with this resource.

Monitoring African water bodies from twice-daily MODIS observation

Building on the availability of high revisit frequency Earth Observation satellites at medium spatial resolution (250 m), this study investigates the feasibility of temporal monitoring of water bodies at a continental scale with MODIS. A 2004–2010 time series of twice-daily observations covering the whole African continent was systematically processed using a surface water detection method to derive 10-day indicators describing the location, the intra- and inter-annual variability as well as the temporal characterization of water bodies (i.e. seasonal or permanent water and maximum extent). The multispectral surface reflectance transformation in the HSV color space allows a per-pixel identification of surface water. The water aggregation time indicator provides the water occurrence for each 10-day period built from the seven years of observations. The cartographic products were successfully cross-validated with already existing maps and water products. The validation of the water body maximum extent map estimates the commission error at less than 6% and the seasonality information was also found to be consistent with the Köppen climatic classification.

Characterization of influence zones of simulated droughts and floods of water bodies in a floodplain

During flooding processes, randomly situated water bodies of varying sizes and shapes in a floodplain tend to self-organize. At high degrees of flooding intensity, water bodies contact together to form influence zones, which indicate the self-organized criticality of the flooding of water bodies. The characterization of water bodies and their influence zones provides useful insight into the geomorphic properties of floodplain terrains. In this paper, characterization of the influence zones of simulated droughts and floods of water bodies in a floodplain is performed. First, drought and flood simulations are implemented by performing morphological erosion and dilation, respectively, on water bodies using square kernels of increasing sizes. The level of droughting/flooding is indicated by the kernel size. The average areas of the influence zones of the generated simulated droughts and floods of water bodies are computed. It is observed that as the droughting level increases from 1 to 5, the average area of the influence zones of water bodies reduces due to the shrinking of water bodies. As the droughting level increases from 5 to 15, the average area of the influence zones of water bodies increases due the vanishing of small water bodies. Flooding causes an increase in the average area of the influence zones of water bodies due to the merging of adjacent water bodies. A power law relationship is observed between the average area of the influence zones of the simulated droughts/floods and the level of droughting/flooding. The scaling exponent of this power law, which is named as a fractal dimension, indicates the rate of change of average area of the influence zones of simulated droughts/floods of water bodies in a floodplain over varying levels of droughting/flooding.

Groundwater protection in Mediterranean countries after the European water framework directive

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) has driven the protection of groundwater and characterization of water bodies. Development of appropriate and efficient approaches which consider the special features of the hydrologic regime is essential. The results of different projects that have been carried out to integrate characterization and protection of water bodies are summarized herein. In the Les eaux de la Mediterranee (AQUAMED) Project, applicability to the Mediterranean Region of guidelines provided by the European Commission to facilitate the WFD implementation has been verified. The Background criteria for the identification of groundwater thresholds (BRIDGE) Project developed a methodology to establish threshold values of pollutants contributing to the chemical status of groundwater bodies. This method has been applied to pollutants used to classify groundwater bodies as at risk of not achieving objectives of the WFD. Selected features of protection areas for drinking water and safeguard zones are analyzed, as well as the possibility of using wellhead protection areas.