Six stations along Tigris river in Baghdad region were chosen to collect and assess the Mn, Ni, Pb, Cu and Cd contamination in sediments by using pollution load index (PLI) and geo-accumulation index (I-geo). Cd was found at the lowest concentration ranged between 0.3-1.3 µg/g dry weight. Whereas, Mn was the highest ranging between 166 -426 µg/g dry weight.Geo-accumulation index indicates that the sediment in the most of studied stations were slightly polluted (grade 1) with respect to Pb and Cd, while the sediments in all studied stations were unpolluted (grade 0) with respect to Mn, Cu and Ni. The values of Pollution Load Index (PLI) were found to be very low, and varied between 0.301-0.970, indicating that the studied stations in Tigris river were unpolluted by total of studied heavy metals.

This study aimed at using nine ecological parameters in evaluating the quality of the Tigris River for public usage, by choosing five sampling sites along the river in Baghdad area. These parameters included temperature, pH, the saturated ratio by dissolved oxygen (%sat), biological oxygen demand (BOD5), nitrate (NO3?1), phosphate (PO4?3), fecal coliform (FC) turbidity and total dissolved solids (TDS), and these parameters were used for calculating overall water quality index in the Tigris River at study area. The results showed high values of turbidity and TDS, as well as high count of FC in all study stations, while other studied parameters were within permissible limit defined by world health organization and Iraqi criteria. The results of the overall water quality index indicated that the Tigris River was in class medium, therefore the Tigris River water in study area is relatively not safe for direct domestic use in all seasons

Biodiversity of zooplankton in the Tigris River running in Baghdad City, central Iraq, was investigated. Fourteen physical and chemical parameters, were analyzed, these parameters include water and air temperature, pH, EC, turbidity, TDS, DO, BOD 5 , total hardness, Ca +2 , Mg +2 , chloride, nitrate and reactive phosphate. Most of these values were within of the Iraqi and international standard limits. In all, 106 taxonomy units of zooplankton were identified, including 65 taxa belonging to rotifers, 25 taxa to copepod and 16 taxa to Cladocera. Values of species richness index of rotifers varied from 1.051 to 12.98, for Cladocera from 1.285 to 3.41 and for copepod from 1.5 to 7.2. The Shannon-Weiner index of Rotifera varied from 0.67 to 3, 0.50-1.72 for Cladocera and from 0.91 to 2.51 for Copepoda. The uniformity index of zooplankton varied from 0.41 to 0.93 for rotifer, 0.33-1 for Cladocera and 0.36-1 for Copepoda. According to statistical analysis, temperature, EC, TDS and dissolved oxygen were observed as major factors which restrict the abundance and diversity of the zooplankton communities in the Tigris River. ª 2015 National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries. Hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

The use of remote sensing and GIS in water monitoring and management has been long recognized. This paper, however discusses the application of remote sensing and GIS specifically in monitoring water quality parameters in Al-Habbaniyah Lake, and the results were compared with in situ measurements. Variations of different parameters under investigation were as follows: temperature (15-33°C), pH (7-9), dissolved oxygen (6-11 mg/L), BOD5 (0.5-1.8), electrical conductivity (200-2280 μS/cm), TDS (147-1520 mg/L), TSS (68-3200), turbidity (5-51), nitrate (0.7-20 mg/l), phosphate (77-220 μg/l), and chlorophyll-a (0.9-130 μg/l). Remote sensing results revealed that the band 5 was most likely significantly correlated with turbidity in the winter. Band 2 and 3 was most likely significantly correlated with TDS in autumn and summer, while band 2 was most likely significantly correlated with TSS in autumn, band 2 is most likely significantly correlated with chlorophyll-a in autumn. The current study results demonstrated convergence between in situ and remote sensing readings. The models were used to explore the values of each of chlorophyll-a, TSS,TDS, and turbidity did not deviate much from the values actually measured in the three seasons. Nevertheless, they were very useful in anticipating all seasons of the study due to the insignificant deviation between the remotely sensed values and actual measured values.

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