Water Quality Monitoring in European and Turkish Rivers Using Diatoms

Water is one of the most essential factors for civilization, and also among the most important items in the new world order due to its unrenewable feature. In this regard, developed countries have continually been monitoring and classifying their water. For this reason, a number of EU countries have developed a national water quality system, considering characteristic structure of their own rivers and have used this type of indices for revealing the current stituation of their water quality level. While water quality monitoring was first determined according to physical and chemical parameters, biological factors such as algae, especially diatoms, benthic macroinvertebrates and fish have recently been used for this purpose. Investigation of benthic diatoms is recommended by the Water Framework Directives (WFD) and European Parliament 2000 directive, 2000/60/EC. They are considered key organisms in ecological quality analyses of water courses and have been applied for more than a decade in several countries of Europe (Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France, Poland, Finland, Luxemburg, United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Italy). Water quality monitoring, based on diatom indices, is a new topic for Turkey especially after the 2000s, and it is getting more and more important each day. The aim of this study, was to form a database for future studies based on diatoms in Turkey.