Paper Title
Assessment Of Physico-Chemical Parameters And Water Quality Index For Shatt Al Arab River, Iraq

Abstract
Shatt Al Arab River is one of the most important rivers in Iraq. It is formed by the concourse of the Tigris and the Euphrates in the small city of Al-Qurnah in the Basrah province of the southern part of Iraq. It is the main source of irrigation water for many towns and cities. The current work aims at evaluating the water quality index (WQI) in the surface water of the Shatt Al Arab River in Basrah province by monitoring five sampling locations within the River (namely, SH1, SH2, SH2B, SH3 and SH4) for a period of two seasons in winter and summer 2014. WQI was employed to assess the water quality of the River based on drinking, irrigation and aquatic life water usages. The water samples were exposed to com¬prehensive physico-chemical analysis, including pH, total dis¬solved solids (TDS), electrical conductivity (EC), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), alkalinity (Alk.), total hardness (TH), phosphate, magne¬sium, calcium, sodium, potassium, nitrate, chloride and sulphate. For determining the WQI, 12 parameters namely, pH, EC, TDS, K+, Na+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Alk., TH , Cl-, NO3-, and SO42- were considered. Moreover, it is evident from WQI values that ranging from poor to unsuitable for drinking water, poor to unsuitable for irrigation water , and poor to the unsuitable for aquatic life water. Keywords- Water quality index; physico-chemical parameter; Shatt Al Arab River.