Abstract:
Been deteriorating due to pollution created by the
anthropogenic activities such as agriculture, domestic and
industrial waste disposal, urban and rural infrastructure
development and deforestation. Further, the behaviour of excess
nutrients applied to crops in the upstream as fertilizers and
transferred to the waterways, remain unresolved. The lack of
proper monitoring and scarcity of progressive water quality
data is severely affecting the studies of systematic and
quantitative assessment of water quality degradation issues as
well as identification of preceding causes. This paper reviews
several studies conducted on the water quality of the basin and
recommends to establish a physics-based model which could
incorporate detailed analyses of water resources management
alternatives and the behaviour of the nutrients, as a remedial
measure to address the data scarcity for basin-wide water
quality management in major river basins in Sri Lanka.
