Water Pollution : Assessment, Modelling and Management

Rapid population growth, increasing urbanization, industrialization, commercial and residential developments and intensive agricultural practices have resulted in increase in production of domestic and industrial sewage, agricultural runoff, fertilizers and insecticides leading to the degradation of surface and groundwater quality adversely affecting human health and the natural environment. Once contaminated it becomes necessary to regularly monitor the quality of water and to devise ways and means to protect and manage it for ensuring better livelihoods and sustainable development. Specific contaminants leading to pollution in water include a range of of chemicals, pathogens, and physical changes such as elevated temperature. Problems caused by the increase of pollutant loads discharged into natural water bodies require regulation based on assessment of scientific results that relate pollutant discharge with changes in water quality. Understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of a wide range of issues including the physical processes of mixing and dilution, chemical and biological processes, data acquisition and measurement, involved in water quality modelling help in taking appropriate management decisions. The book covers variety of topics viz., Water pollution : sources effects and control; Adverse performance of hydropower projects due to chemical nature of water; Ecological stress on the diversity of aquatic flora and fauna; Toxicity of ammonium perchlorate waste water fish Tilapia massambica; Toxicity of chlorinated pesticides on vital organs of fish Puntius tiato; Impact of heavy metal contamination of industrial waste water on cultivated vegetables; Distribution of heavy metals in lake sediments; Rate of reparian vegetation in pollution abatement, Water equality analysis of community ponds; Comparative assessment of ground water; Effects of elevated temperatures on phytoplankton population, Environmetric models in the assessment of surface water quality; Investigation on the physico chemical parameters of tropical river; Ground water arsenic contamination; application of mathematical models in aquatic pollution assessment. Chapter on affect of carbon sources on the biomass build-up and degradation of rubber processing industing effluent have added value to the book. Thus the book provides a glimpse of water pollution studies involving assessment of a wide range of data and interdisciplinary processes so as to apply for more efficient methods of water pollution modelling and management.