Assessment of the Ecological State and Water Quality Class of Water Bodies in the Bukhara Region According to the periphyton Indicators

Due to the increase in anthropogenic factors, such as the expansion of industrial production, urbanization, the development of virgin lands, the construction of new roads, the use of various methods of irrigation, etc., there is an inevitable deterioration in the quality of water, both for drinking and recreational purposes. At the same time, there is a need for wider use of tools for assessing various pollution of water sources. The article provides information on the ecological state of water bodies in terms of fouling or periphyton. Periphyton (fouling) – (from the Greek perijnw- to grow, overgrow) A.L. Benning, 1924)), communities of organisms living on a variety of underwater (living or dead) substrates, raised above the bottom, regardless of their origin (hydraulic structures, walls of water pipes, on concrete slopes and snags, on aquatic plants and animals [1]. The composition of fouling includes representatives of three main functional groups: autotrophic organisms – producers (algae); heterotrophic organisms – consumers (protozoa, rotifers, worms, molluscs and others) and decomposer organisms (zoogloeal, filamentous, rod-shaped, coccoid and other forms of bacteria and fungi). Periphyton, due to its confinement to the substrate, plays a primary role in assessing the quality of water and allows one to judge its average pollution for a certain period of time prior to the study. In other words, analysis of periphyton can indicate a prior deterioration in water quality that has not been detected in one-time chemical samples. Periphyton is indispensable in studies related to the assessment of the ecological state of water systems.