There are various types of water quality sondes that can be purchased, which can measure a variety of water quality components including water level which may be important to estimate change trend in storage or flow. In addition, there are a variety of water quality indicators or surrogates ranging from remote sensing to aquatic invertebrates, etc. that may help identify condition or trends if sampled periodically. Other data on watershed conditions such as land uses and changes in activities or conditions such as drought, flood, wildfire, chemical spill, instream mining, navigation activities, etc. May affect water quality. It is usually best to design to address the problems at present, but also helpful to have some background history to look back at to help determine if increased monitoring, mitigation or other actions should be considered. If you find an area in USA or other country with some similarity to your area of interest, access the US Geological Service website and see the most common indicators they obtain for assessing water quality in streams or lakes.
According to my point of view, may be the most expressive detector on the overall water quality is the conductivity of the water and its temperature since other parameters can affect the conductivity of the water to some extent.
For more information about water quality sensor please refer to the link:http://www.libelium.com/smart-water-sensors-to-monitor-water-quality-in-rivers-lakes-and-the-sea/
Libelium sensors are working good, I used them in a project, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317499457_Configuration_programming_and_implementation_of_3_Smart_Water_network_wireless_sensor_nodes_for_assessing_the_water_quality . You need just to deploy the sensors so that they won't be affected by the sediments (fine sediments in lake, coarse sediments in rivers, and the energy of the river, the flow, the volume etc. ) the sensors need to stay in the water to have a good response. Anyway in the article that i mentioned, you can find details about the sensors.
Article Configuration, programming and implementation of 3 Smart Wat...