Assessment of Water and Sediment Quality in Fresh Water Bodies Based on Characteristics of Benthic Communities

摘要

The quality of the natural environment, pure water and air, undisturbed landscapes, and the diversity of living and nonliving nature are the main assets in the present-day world, to say nothing about the future (Klyuev, 2001, p. 39). In water bodies, there are two main substrata for hydrobionts: water and bottom sediments. The former receives much more attention. Many studies deal with the assessment of water quality, and numerous chemical, hydrobiological, and combined techniques have been proposed. Even the definition of an inland water body as "an accumulation of stagnant or slowly flowing water (lakes, reservoirs, ponds, pools, etc.)" (Sovetskii..., 1982) contains no reference to bottom sediments as its essential part and the second most important substratum for its fauna and flora