Identification of the self-purification stretches of the Pinios River, Central Greece

Abstract

The Pinios River basin in Thessaly, Greece, is intensively farmed and heavily polluted with poorly treated domestic and industrial waste. The river was divided into 35 homogenous stretches. We investigated the self-purification capacity along the different stretches of the Pinios based on the responses of the benthic macroinvertebrate community to municipal, industrial and agricultural pollution in the basin. Water quality was assessed by the performance of six diversity and biotic indices and scores for assessing water quality. Self-purification found by the downstream amelioration of water quality was evident at five stretches. These stretches should be safeguarded and priority should be given to restoration projects along the most water-quality-degraded stretches that lack the capacity for self-purification.

Macro-invertebrate Diversity and its Relationship with Environmental Variables in Adha Lake between Monsoon and Post-monsoon Seasons

“…The water is slightly acidic during post monsoon. Chatzinikolaou and Lazaridou (2007) mentioned that constant constructions together with contamination from agriculture runoff have direct relation with the water pH and siltation. Besides contamination from anthropogenic activities, the vegetation along the water bodies have maximum influences on physiochemical param-eters including water pH (Fernandez-Diaz and Benetti, 2008;Dorji, 2014).…”

“…Moreover, the lake receives significant amount of inorganic surface runoff from surrounding paddy field during monsoon. The nutrient inflow enrich water making fit for surface algae bloom (Chatzinikolaou and Lazaridou, 2007;Benetti and Garrido, 2010). Leaf litters and vegetative materials such as twigs and logs were observed inside the lake from surrounding vegetation cover (forest east and west zone), which also aid in making wa-ter high in productivity (Hepp and Santos, 2009;Dorji, 2014).…”

A preliminary pressure–impact analysis applied in the Pinios river basin (Thessaly, Central Greece)

“…2004; Bellos & Sawidis 2005). According to benthic macroinvertebrate field surveys (Chatzinikolaou & Lazaridou 2007), 51% of the sites are of medium biological quality, 29 and 9% are of bad and very bad quality, respectively, and only 11% (six stations) are of good quality (Fig. 5).…”

“…Finally, biological water quality was assessed at 56 sites along the main channel of the River Pinios and some of its tributaries. Benthic macroinvertebrate sampling took place during autumn 2002 (Chatzinikolaou & Lazaridou 2007) and was semiquantitative. Biological quality was first standardised in relation to habitat richness (Chatzinikolaou et al .…”

Macroinvertebrates as Indicators of Water Quality in Running Waters: 10 Years of Research in Rivers with Different Degrees of Anthropogenic Impacts

“…Most of them have quite narrow ecological requirements and are very useful as bioindicators in determining the characteristics of aquatic environments (Benetti & Garrido, 2010;Fernández-Díaz et al, 2008;Pérez-Bilbao & Garrido, 2009), to identify the segments of a polluted river where self-purification of organic inputs is under process (Chatzinikolaou & Lazaridou 2007).…”