Analysis and Conservation Management on Water Quality in Korea’ s Four Major Rivers

The World Future Society warned that the price of water will rival that of oil and that two thirds of the world’s population will suffer from water shortages by 2025. In this study, the general status of water resource, water quality management, policy of water quality management and four major rivers in Korea were showed. Based on these status, we studied the water quality of Han River, Nakdong River, Geum River and Yeongsan River by some targets, for example, biochemical oxygen demand(BOD), total nitrogen(TN), total phosphorus, NO3-N, NH3-N and hazardous materials, from 1999 to 2009 year. During these 10 years, the value of most indexes was controlled in a certain range, though there was some high value exited. It could be considered that the policy of water quality management had been given full scope to the water quality control. Moreover, there were no hazardous materials in all of four major rivers from 1999 to 2009 year. Finally, we put forward some proposals to protect and improve the water quality. 1) establishment of more monitoring networks 2) constitution and improvement of environmental institutions 3) execution of projects for water quality 4) pro-environmental agriculture