Evaluation of water quality parameters for the Mamasin dam in Aksaray City in the central Anatolian part of Turkey by means of artificial neural networks

Sustaining the human ecological benefits of surface water requires carefully planned strategies for reducing the cumulative risks posed by diverse human activities. The municipality of Aksaray city plays a key role in developing solutions to surface water management and protection in the central Anatolian part of Turkey. The responsibility to provide drinking water and sewage works, regulate the use of private land and protect public health provides the mandate and authority to take action. The present approach discusses the main sources of contamination and the result of direct wastewater discharges into the Melendiz and Karasu rivers, which recharge the Mamasın dam sites by the use of artificial neural network (ANN) modeling techniques. The present study illustrates the ability to predict and/or approve the output values of previously measured water quality parameters of the recharge and discharge areas at the Mamasin dam site by means of ANN techniques. Using the ANN model is appreciated in such environmental research. Here, the ANN is used for estimating if the field parameters are agreeable to the results of this model or not. The present study simulates a situation in the past by means of ANN. But in case any field measurements of some relative parameters at the outlet point “discharge area” have been missed, it could be possible to predict the approximate output values from the detailed periodical water quality parameters. Because of the high variance and the inherent non-linear relationship of the water quality parameters in time series, it is difficult to produce a reliable model with conventional modeling approaches. In this paper, the ANN modeling technique is used to establish a model for evaluating the change in electrical conductivity (EC) and dissolved oxygen (DO) values in recharge (input) and discharge (output) areas of the dam water under pollution risks. A general ANN modeling scheme is also recommended for the water parameters. The modeling process includes four main stages: (1) source data analysis, (2) system priming, (3) system fine-tuning and (4) model evaluation. Results of the ANN modeling scheme indicate that the output values are agreeable to the water quality parameters, which were measured at the field in the static water mass of the Mamasın dam lake. Water contamination at the dam site is caused by the continuous increase of nutrient contents and decrease of the O₂ level in water causing an anaerobic condition. It may stimulate algae growth flow in such water bodies, consequently reducing water quality.