Abstract:
Hydrological system is a quite complex and dynamic in nature because
of the heterogeneity of the earth crust and surrounding atmosphere. Water exists on
the earth in all three forms of liquid, solid and gas. The scarcity of its liquid
freshwater has resulted because of increasing demand in response to growing
population, contamination and pollution of freshwater bodies due to urbanization
and industrialization. Precise measurement of water quality, in present time, has
become the necessity because of increasing scarcity of this precious resource. In a
global perspective, organizations dealing with water supply and monitoring are ever
concerned about precise assessment of water quality. Researchers are focusing on
the assessment of surface and ground water quality on spatial scale rather than point
scale, which needs strengthening of monitoring networks time-to-time. The design
of a hydrometric network starts ideally with a minimum number of stations, and
increases gradually until an optimum network is attained when the amount and
quality of data collected and information processed is economically justifiable and it
meets the user’s needs to make specific decisions. In hydrology, monitoring of data
is mostly site-specific and proper representation of this data on spatial scale requires
proper network planning. Since the drivers of water quality vary in space and time,
the quality of water also varies in space and time. It is therefore imperative to
monitor the quality of water under heterogeneous space-dependent conditions for
which a specialized water quality monitoring network is essential. The present
paper is in the context of identifying and planning of water quality monitoring
network for data acquisition for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM).
