Field Studies to Investigate the Eutrophication Problem in the Anzali Wetland

In the recent years, eutrophication has become a serious challenge for many of the water ecosystems. It has affected the environmental and economical aspects of the Anzali Wetland, which is known as one of the significant ecosystem. Due to the increase of the nutrient loadings from the industrial, agricultural and human activities, the wetland’s health is faced many serious problems. Therefore, in this study the wetland condition is evaluated through the field measurements and sampling from various regions of the wetland; then the data obtained were analyzed in order to review this conditions from the Eutrophicational point of view that is one of the most important conditional indexes of the lakes and wetlands. In this research, in addition to use the field measurements to determine the wetland quality status related to the nutrient loadings, the results from total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) measured parameters of 21 stations in the study area were transferred to the Geographical Information System (GIS) and then the Eutrophication condition of the wetland was determined in comparison to international standards. This study illustrated that since the wetland has received more nutrients loading comparing to the few past years, so most of the wetland regions have high levels of TN and TP. Also, performing more investigations using Nurnberg method based on TN and TP depicted that hypertrophic status is dominated in all over the wetland. although the procedure used in this research was very simple and with the least computational cost to determine the hypertrophic status of the Anzali Wetland, but the findings gained from the study is in compliance with the previous results achieved.