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Newsletter and Technical Publications
<Planning and Management of Lakes and
Reservoirs:
An Integrated Approach to Eutrophication>
CHAPTER 6. TECHNOLOGICAL AND MANAGERIAL ASPECTS OF EUTROPHICATION
6.10. Monitoring as a Management and Decision-Making Tool in Water
Quality and Eutrophication
In most countries, including most developing countries, monitoring for
water quality has been established for many decades. In the past, and even
today in some lesser developed countries, monitoring has been mainly
focused on public health issues with a principal interest in
microbiological vectors that are the main causes of water-borne diseases.
In such cases, water quality monitoring is generally under the control of
ministries of health, and the larger dimensions of aquatic pollution may
not be included in such programmes. However, as countries become more
developed and the range of aquatic impacts from water pollution increase,
monitoring becomes more comprehensive with the hope that it will provide
information on a wide range of water quality management issues.
Unfortunately, in many countries (including many developed countries), it
has been the experience of many professionals in this field that
monitoring, as an activity, tends to be poorly focused and without clear
sets of programme objectives. The consequence is that these programmes are
inefficient and do not provide the level of information, which is needed
to provide a more effective tool for managing environmental concerns which
give rise to aquatic degradation. This information is also necessary for
predicting the outcome of potential remedial interventions or for helping
governments to develop useful policies for aquatic protection and
remediation. Monitoring for eutrophication identification and control is a
sub-set of the problems faced by monitoring in general. Therefore, this
section will first focus on the principal factors that need to be
considered in developing reliable and cost-effective monitoring
programmes. Secondly, technical aspects unique to eutrophication will be
discussed. Note, however, that monitoring for toxic substances tends to be
quite different than for nutrients and other general water quality
parameters and is excluded in this discussion. Two key references on
monitoring are Bartram and Balance (1996) and Chapman (1996).
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