**3. Conclusions**

Water quality has emerged as one of the main concerns around the world recently, as it plays a significant role in promoting socio-economic development as well as maintaining viable ecosystems. The impact of water quality degradation has serious consequences, including eutrophication, sedimentation, harmful algae proliferation, and hypoxia, which has a negative impact on human settlements and ecosystems in terms of health and economy.

The Argeș River from Romania encounters significant pressures from anthropogenic factors as well as other rivers [30] that pass highly inhabited areas with moderate efficiency of wastewater treatment. In addition to the potentially significant pressures already presented above, other types of activities/pressures may affect the condition of water bodies such as accidental pollution, fishing, and aquaculture activities, ballast and sand extraction from minor riverbeds, forest exploitation, unidentified pressures, etc. [31].

The following recommendations are suggested to maintain or improve future water quality at the hydrological basin level:

