Using the AQUATOX model to forecast water bodies quality status response to environmental perturbations

Abstract

In the last decades, the scientific community has developed many methods and approaches for the assessment of surface waters quality status and the relative impacts of anthropogenic pressures including, among the others, municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants, agriculture, animal farming and many other land uses. According to the Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC), each EU Member State has been committed to identifying River Basin Districts, in which, ideally, every water body within European boundaries should have been included. As a contribution to the quality assessment of the Sardinian River Basin District, in the framework of the project “Hydraulic and environmental modelling for the gap analysis and the identification of programmes of measures aimed to satisfy the environmental quality objectives” funded by the Regione Sardegna, we applied a simplified version of the AQUATOX model, developed for investigating its feasibility and validity in case of missing or poor input data and information, on the river Cixerri case study.