IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/waterr/v22y2008i1p119-130.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Investigation of the Impacts of Agricultural Runoff on the Water Quality and Aquatic Organisms in a Lowveld Sand River System in Southeast Zimbabwe

Author

Listed:
  • Clifford Tafangenyasha
  • Lawrence Dube

Abstract

In this research we examined the hypothesis that agricultural pollution is a key determinant of variability in nutrients concentrations and benthic fauna in a semi-arid tropical lowveld region of southeast Zimbabwe. Water quality was monitored in the river water column and river bottom sediments at a time when dissolved oxygen concentration was thought to be very low during the winter period in the rivers passing through low input agricultural sections and intensive commercial agricultural sections. The surveys used established chemical methods and biological methods. Benthic fauna assemblages were used to complement chemical cases of nutrient loading at localities chosen for sampling. Unpolluted control sites were not significantly different (t test, p > 0.05) from polluted sites in levels in mean values of dissolved oxygen, conductivity, total dissolved solids and mean density (no.m 2 ) of benthic invertebrates in May. Significant differences (t test, p > 0.05) were not found in mean values of calcium, magnesium, potassium, total nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen and total phosphorous in river bottom sediments in May and August. These data certainly do not support the notion that the Runde River is severely polluted by the upstream agricultural activities and the hypothesis that agricultural runoff is a key determinant of water quality is rejected. As the data suggests the Runde River may be receiving moderate nutrient pollution. The positive effects of moderate eutrophication on fish catch and the trade-off in pollution implied here needs to be addressed by appropriate agricultural and environmental policies that relate to water pollution and land use. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2008

Suggested Citation

  • Clifford Tafangenyasha & Lawrence Dube, 2008. "An Investigation of the Impacts of Agricultural Runoff on the Water Quality and Aquatic Organisms in a Lowveld Sand River System in Southeast Zimbabwe," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 22(1), pages 119-130, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:waterr:v:22:y:2008:i:1:p:119-130
    DOI: 10.1007/s11269-006-9147-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-006-9147-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11269-006-9147-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clifford Tafangenyasha, 2017. "African Rivers are Major Sinks of Plastic Pollution and Carry a Major Effect on Life in Freshwater and Marine Ecosystems," International Journal of Environmental Sciences & Natural Resources, Juniper Publishers Inc., vol. 4(2), pages 79-80, - August.
    2. Mohamad Fulazzaky, 2009. "Water Quality Evaluation System to Assess the Brantas River Water," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 23(14), pages 3019-3033, November.
    3. M. Lenhardt & G. Markovic & Z. Gacic, 2009. "Decline in the Index of Biotic Integrity of the Fish Assemblage as a Response to Reservoir Aging," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 23(9), pages 1713-1723, July.
    4. Lawrence Kiage & Nan Walker, 2009. "Using NDVI from MODIS to Monitor Duckweed Bloom in Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 23(6), pages 1125-1135, April.
    5. Bahman Amiri & Kaneyuki Nakane, 2009. "Modeling the Linkage Between River Water Quality and Landscape Metrics in the Chugoku District of Japan," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 23(5), pages 931-956, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:waterr:v:22:y:2008:i:1:p:119-130. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.