Use of Diatoms in Monitoring the Sakarya River Basin, Turkey

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.

Benthic Diatoms in River Biomonitoring—Present and Future Perspectives within the Water Framework Directive

“…Their short lifecycle allows them to respond fast to any natural and anthropogenic disturbance, making them more sensitive to environmental changes than other biotic groups [23,24], and highlighting their pivotal diagnostic potential. They rapidly respond to changes of environmental parameters such as temperature, pH, salinity, organic pollutants, inorganic nutrients and heavy metals [25][26][27][28][29][30][31], being sensitive both to nonpoint (e.g., agriculture) [7,26] and point-source pollution (e.g., olive mill wastes [28], toxic industrial wastes [29]). Diatoms have the advantage to reveal pollution of heavy metals and toxic elements at the organism level, through the occurrence of teratological forms, whereas assessment of assemblage changes or common biological quality indices could mask possible negative effects [29][30][31][32][33].…”

The Relationship of Water Quality to Epipelic Diatom Assemblages in Cebong Lake, Dieng Indonesia

“…The indices that included the highest amount of species diversity with more than 70% identified species were IDG, IPS, TDI, IBD. These indices were also provided a better results on the reflection of water quality in Ethiopia [103], Turkey [104], and China [105]. TDI had applied to determine water quality upstream of Cileungsi River, West Java that classified from good to poor condition [106].…”

Assessment of Macrophyte Biological Index for Rivers, and evaluation of physicochemical parameters in the Sakarya River Basin of Turkey

“…Macrophytique en Rivière (IBMR; Haury et al, 2006). The IBMR method has been officially adopted by several countries including France, where the method was first developed, Italy, Belgium (Wallonia), and Turkey to assess the ecological quality of freshwaters, as per the European Water Framework Directive (European Council 2000) of the European Parliament and the Council (Solimini et al, 2008;Manera et al, 2014).…”

“…The basin is located in the northwest of the Anatolian Peninsula, having a drainage area of 58160 km 2 (DSİ, 2016). The rivers in the basin pass through 13 densely urbanized provinces (Eskişehir, Sakarya, Bilecik, Ankara, Bolu, Kütahya, Afyonkarahisar, Konya, Bursa, Kocaeli, Düzce, Çankırı, and Uşak) where many industrial facilities are located (Solak et al, 2020). Thus, monitoring the basin's ecological status is crucial for protecting freshwater sources and nature.…”