Introduction - Water Quality Management: Assessment and Interpretation - page 1

Chapter 1
Introduction

Abstract The abatement of fresh water and groundwater resources, increasing
population as well as industrial demands render the protection and preservation of
these resources all the more important. Water quality is a term applied to indicate
the suitability or unsuitability of water for various uses. Each type of water uses
needs certain physical, chemical and biological characteristic while various uses
have some common characteristic. Water quality management is the management
of water quality of the physical, chemical and biological characteristic of water;
therefore, management and regulatory agencies can use to evaluate alternatives and
make necessary decisions. In this chapter, after de

ning a few water quality terms

and a brief review of the signi cance of water quality management, the framework

of the topic was described.

1.1 Introduction

Life on this planet is positively linked to water. The dwindling fresh water resources,
increasing population as well as industrial demands render the protection and
preservation of these resources all the more important. The situation is particularly of
concern in semiarid and arid countries with growing population and industry.
Groundwater resources are scanty and the rainfall, though meager, is not uniform.
One such country is Iran, located in the Middle East, to receive merely enough
rainfall in its Northern and Western parts to sustain those regions themselves, while
the rest of the land mass is either semi arid or arid. Hence, healthy sized budgets and
time need to be devoted to constructing infrastructure for the transportation of
drinking water from the more endowed parts of drier ones. Needless to say, pro-
tection and maintenance of water quality over the long haul is very important.
It is necessary to establish the current quality of surface and ground water
resources before measures can be taken to control water pollution. Brie y, the

process involves establishing water quality monitoring stations along the waterway
to collect samples for the analysis of the characteristic of water followed by rig-
orous interpretation of the collected data since the colossal amount of data without