I took so many pictures of the river running through Amasya, the Yeşilırmak or Green River, that I decided to put them in a separate gallery, so I have more space for other views of the town. There is not much to explain, to its north there is a stretched out series of fine old houses, almost all given over to tourism, to the south there is the modern town, with the major monuments. The order of the pictures is haphazardly, my taking pictures during several walks about town. Thanks to my GPS-tagging you can get a rough idea of where I took them. See Map view.

You will see that on the top of hill behind the old houses sits the kale or fortress, with in its flank graves of Pontic kings (kings of the kingdom of Pontus), 18 in all but many almost invisible, for deified kings, dating back to the fourth century BC.

The Yeşilırmak (= Green River) is the second longest river of Turkey. From its source north-east of Sivas, it flows past Tokat and Amasya, and reaches the Black Sea at Samsun after some 500 km.

A recent comprehensive study of water chemistry (1995-2008) indicates that the current water quality status of the river system is low. The majority of examined sites fall in the Turkish water classification class II-III and more than half fail the EU standards because of high nutrient concentrations. In order to improve the status of water quality to achieve good chemical and ecological status, there is clearly a need to improve pollution control within the river system by installing waste water treatment plants, while keeping the agricultural pollution to a minimum in the system.

Correspondent: J.M.Criel, Antwerpen.
Source: Journal of Environmental Protection, 2013, 4 (on www.scirp.org).