BIoLoGICAL MonIToRInG oF WATERS

The management of natural environments passes from the possibility to know environmental features and their evolution in time. Generally quality assessment is based on chemistry or microbiology, and physical values, to justify laws and sanctions. The big problem of these precise measures, however, is in the necessity they have to be recorded in a more or less continuous monitoring. Punctual measures are not good to assess the consequences of acute stress episodes, but simply they measure them. The biological monitoring is the solution for such a kind of necessity. The presence of long living organisms (eucaryotes, generally multicellular) ensures the existence of an average good condition for the species to which they belong. Biological indicators (chemicals inside an organism, the whole organism as well, or community structures) can describe the environmental status. Nowadays, the use of community characteristics, although complex, is considered useful for the quality assessment. This requires a deeper biological study of environments and a growth of interest towards nature in general. A series of studies carried out on Albanian water bodies allowed to discuss the proposed trend.