BALWOIS 2012 - Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia - 28 May, 2 June 2012 1 Water Quality from Microbiological Point of View of Vjosa River, Albania Etleva Hamzaraj 1 , P. Lazo 2 , A. Paparisto 1 , O. Laknori 1 , S. Duka 2 , O. Dahriu 1 1 Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tirana, Albania 2 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tirana, Albania etbur@yahoo.com Abstract An increasing impact of human activities in environment is noticed during the last decades. The social- economic development has been accompanied by considerable changes in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. One of our duties is to monitor continuously human impact in environment and for this reason we decided to monitor water quality of Vjosa River, as one of most important rivers in south of Albania, based on microbiological indicators during 2011. Vjosa is a transboundary river, shared between Greece and Albania, whose spring is in Pindi Mountains. Its total length is about 272 kilometres, of which the first 80 kilometres are in Greece, and the remaining 192 kilometres are in Albania, where it passes through many urban areas and a relatively high human impact is expected. Samples are collected almost every month from March 2011 in six stations along the river. MPN index is used for evaluation of total coliform bacteria in water, while the number of heterotrophic bacteria is determined by counting colonies on plates with PCA, cultivated with 0.1 ml sample after a serries dilutions. Environmental parameters like pH, temperature, turbidity, ammonia, phosphate, nitrite and dissolved oxygen are estimated using standard methods. According to preliminary results, as it was expected, there is a high load of feacal coliform bacteria and heterotrophs in sample stations near urban areas. A seasonal change is observed in bacterial parameters. The human impact in the quality of water of Vjosa river is more than evident. Introduction Freshwater is a finite resource, essential for agriculture, industry and even human existence. Without freshwater of adequate quantity and quality sustainable development will not be possible. The extent of the human activities that influence the environment has increased dramatically during the past few decades and in this contest aquatic ecosystems are threatened on a world wide scale. Reliable monitoring data are the indispensable basis for the assessments of trends in water quality. Access to adequate water of good quality is essential to health, food production and sustainable development. Every human use of water, whether for drinking, irrigation, industrial processes or for recreation has some quality requirements in order to make it acceptable. This quality criterion can be described in terms of physical, chemical and biological properties of such water (1). The objective of this study was to monitor the water quality of Vjosa River, Albania, based on microbiological indicators and to evaluate the role of seasonal changes of environmental parameters, and human impact on these indicators (6, 12). Vjosa is a transboundary river, shared between Greece and Albania, whose spring is in Pindi Mountains. Its total length is about 272 kilometres, of which the first 80 kilometres are in Greece, and the remaining 192 kilometres are in Albania, where it passes through many urban areas and a relatively high human impact is expected. Commonly used microbial indicators of fecal contamination are total coliforms, fecal coliforms and fecal streptococci. The total coliform group belongs to the family Enterobacteriaceae and includes the aerobic and facultative anaerobic, gram-negative, nonspore-forming, rod-shaped bacteria that ferment lactose with gas production within 48 hours at 35ºC (2, 3). This group includes Escherichia coli, Enterobacter,