Watershed influence on fluvial ecosystems: an integrated methodology for river water quality management.

The EU Water Framework Directive 2000/60 (Integrated River Basin Management for Europe) establishes the importance of preserving water quality through policies applied at watershed level given the strong links existing among ecological, hydrological, and hydrogeological systems. Therefore, monitoring campaigns of river water quality should be planned with multidisciplinary approaches starting from a landscape perspective. In this paper, the effects of the basin hydrology on the river water quality and, in particular, the impacts caused by the runoff production coming from agricultural areas are investigated.