Water Quality Requirements (1) PDF

Water Quality Requirements Unit 2 Course Instructor: Rayanna Boodram Why is water quality important? Life on our planet is highly dependent on freshwater. Freshwater is a scarce resource and is a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent of t...

Water Quality Requirements Unit 2 Course Instructor: Rayanna Boodram Why is water quality important? Life on our planet is highly dependent on freshwater. Freshwater is a scarce resource and is a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is freshwater. The rest is saline seawater. Even then, just around 1.2 percent of our freshwater is easily accessible, as much of the 2.5 percent of total freshwater is trapped in glaciers and ice caps (68.7 percent) and groundwater (30.1 percent). Preserving the quality of freshwater is essential to prevent harm to human health and to the aquatic ecosystems, from which we get many other benefits such as drinking water, food and recreation.  Water Quality Requirements Water quality can be classified into four types—potable water, palatable water, contaminated (polluted) water, and infected water. SDGs monitors the proportion of bodies of water with good ambient water quality, in relation to national and/or subnational water quality standards. This is done based on measurements of five water quality parameters that provide information on the most common pressures on water quality at the global level. The main water quality parameters are: 1. dissolved oxygen (surface water) 2. electrical conductivity (surface water and groundwater) 3. nitrogen/nitrate (surface water and groundwater) 4. phosphorus (surface water) 5. pH (surface water and groundwater) 6. Temperature End