Fuzzy synthetic evaluation of surface water quality of Naoli River on Sanjiang Plain, northeast China

The Naoh River Watershed is one of the intensification of agricultural development on the Sanjiang Plain in the past 50 years. Degradation of soil quality caused by large area reclamation on the Sanjiang Plain has been widely reported in research studies. However, issues of water, especially surface water quality patterns and dynamics have drawn little attention. As water is a critical component of regional sustainable development, monitoring and assessment of surface water quality patterns and dynamics will provide an overall knowledge of water conditions and assist in establishing a scientific basis for environmental planning, decision making and effective management. Based on summarized the procedure of fuzzy synthetic evaluation, the quality, of surface water of the Naoli River was assessed by using a Fuzzy Synthetic Evaluation (FSE) model. The results showed that water quality of the main course and its three tributaries of the Naoh River were generally good during the monitoring period, but significant differences existed between the main stream and the tributaries, the mountain area and the low plain, the forest area and the cultivated land. This study indicated that surface water quality was strongly influenced by Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) adjacent to the river. The study provided some valuable information of surface water quality of the Naoli River watershed on the Sanjiang Plain, a representative region of agricultural development and may have general implications on national or global scale.