Devastated by the combined impact of massive drainage works and upstream damming since the 1980's, Al-Hammar Marsh, Southern Iraq, has completely collapsed with 94 % of its land cover transformed into bare land and salt crusts by 2000. After a policy initiated to restore the Iraqi marshes again in 2003, the marsh recovered about half of its former area. As a part of the ecological recovery assessment of this newly inundated marsh, it is important to investigate the extend impact of desiccation after 3 years of inundation on water quality as the latter plays an important role in the restoration process of the marshes. Therefore, from a restoration point of view, major and trace element distribution and sourcing as well as seasonal variati

Concentrations and distribution of major, minor, and trace elements were
studied in thirteen sediment samples from Al-Hammar Marsh.
Multivariate statistical techniques such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
and Agglomerative Hierarchal Cluster Analysis (AHCA) as well as pollution
analysis such as Enrichment Factor (EF) were used to process the data and identify
the possible sources of elemental constituents in sediment samples.Results of
chemical analysis revealed that Major element mean concentrations were in the
order of Ca> Si> K> Mg> and minor elements were in the order of Al> Fe>S>Cl>
Ti> P>Mn> Sr> N and trace elements were in the order of Cr> Ni> Zr>V>Zn&gt

The fish assemblage in the East Hammar marsh was studied during December 2009 to May 2010. The fish fauna of the marsh consisted of 17 native, 23 marine (49%) and seven alien species. The dominant species were Liza abu (14.6%), Carassius auratus (13.4%) and Thryssa mystax (11.2%). The resident species formed 44.7%, occasional species 36.1% and seasonal species 19.2% of the total number of fish species. Fish species diversity index ranged from 1.28 to 2.61, richness from 1.98 to 4.50 and evenness from 0.45 to 0.78. Salinity ranged from 1.45 to 7.74‰. The increase in the proportion of marine species (49%) in the fish assemblage due to marine waters progress from Arabian Gulf had an impact on the values of ecological indices and the

An aggregate of 30 samples (water, sediments, and plants) was collected from Al-Chibayish Marsh, located in Dhi-Qar Governorate southern of Iraq to investigate the bioaccumulation and biomagnification in marsh plants (flora) and to assess the marsh plants pollution condition. The study was conducted by testing the macro elements, microelements, heavy metals, and organic compositions in water, sediments, and plants. Plant analyses revealed that the Salvinia natans plant species had the highest concentrations of macroelements Mg, Ca, Na, P, and N compared with other marsh plants and sediments. As a result, the cation binds itself to be more than one charged cationic site and this behaviour was observed in Salvinia natans sp. which has the

Parasitological investigation of piscivorous birds in Al-Hammar marsh south of Iraq during December-February 2004 and December 2005 were revealed that water birds infected with five nematode species, which belong to three different superfamilies, Desmidocercella numidica (Seurat, 1920) (Superfamily: Aproctoidea) from three piscivorous birds including Grey heron Ardea cinerea, Bittern Botaurusstellaris, and small white heron Ardeola ralloides; Avioserpens sp. 1 and Avioserpens sp. 2 (Superfamily: Dracunculoidea) from small bittern Ixobrychus minutus and black glossy ibis Plegadisfalcinellus respectively; Baruscapillaria sp. and Baruscapillarinae gen. sp. (Sup

The object of the presented study was to monitor the changes that had happened in the main features (water, vegetation, and soil) of Al-Hammar Marsh region. To fulfill this goal, different satellite images had been used in different times, MSS 1973, TM 1990, ETM+ 2000, 2002, and MODIS 2009, 2010. A new technique of the unsupervised classification called (Color Extracting Technique) was used to classify the satellite images. MATLAP programming used the technique and separated Al-Hammar Marsh from other water features (rivers, irrigated lands, etc.) when calculated the changes in the water content of the study region. ArcGIS 9.3 (arcMAP, arcToolbox) were used to achieve this work and calculate area of each class.

Seasonally variations in Physio-chemical parameters of Al-Auda Marsh were investigated from November 2012 to July 2013. In this research examine pH, turbidity, EC, DO, BOD5 and Ca+2, Mg+2, NO2 , NO3 , PO4 , SiO3 ions. Six sites were randomly located and water samples. pH values varied from (7.3 ±0.0) in site 4 during autumn to (8.5±0.5) in site 6 during winter, EC values ranged from (2020±186) μ.s/cm in site 5 during autumn to (6390±875) μ.s/cm in site 6 during summer, mean turbidity data were found to vary from (6.5 ±1.8) NTU in site 4 in summer to (31.0 ±1.6) NTU in site 3 in autumn. DO highest mean value (10.9 ± 0.6) was for site 6 in autumn and the lowest value (6.5±0.9) mg/l for site3 in spring. In case of BOD5 highest and