Assessment of physicochemical attributes of river damodar from barakar its upstream zone to burdwan the downstream zone

The river Damodar is subjected to a varying degree of pollution, caused by numerous outfalls of municipal and industrial effluents and by other activities. Clean water is essential to human survival as well as to the aquatic life. The study was conducted at twenty water quality monitoring stations in premonsoon, monsoon and postmonsoon seasons to assess the limnological characteristic of the river Damodar. Water pollution is one of the major problems in developing countries like India and the major river is subjected to various forms of pollution with regular decline in water quality. The life of aquatic organism depends directly on limnological characteristic of aquatic environment. The changes in limnological composition may leads to river water pollution. The seasonal data shows the range of a minimum concentration of most of the ionic particles in postmonsoon and a maximum concentration in premonsoon season, reflecting the concentrating effects. The major factors that decides the quality of the water in the study area is agricultural activities near the river downstream zone and also mining as well as industrial activities at the upstream zone of the river. The results of physicochemical parameters depict high mean values of alkalinity (304 mg/l), pH (8.3), sulphate (57.06 mg/l), phosphate (0.438 mg/l ), nitrate (2.69 mg/l). High values of alkalinity, hardness, COD and chlorides indicate the pollution of reverine ecosystem due to domestic waste, municipal sewage, industrial effluents, organic matter and agricultural runoff.