The purpose of the research is to establish the total number of ponds in Ukraine and to analyse the territorial distribu-tion in the administrative areas, as well as in the river basin districts, as the main hydrographic units of water management. Cadastral data of the State Agency of Water Resources of Ukraine regional offices as of 2019 was used in the research (as to Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions we applied the data as of 2014). According the researches there are 50,793 ponds in Ukraine with a total water table area of 2,92899 ha and the volume of 3,969.4 mln m3 of water in 2019. The quantitative distribution of ponds across Ukraine is unequal. Most of them are concentrated in the central part of the country (10.5% of the total number of ponds in the country are in Vinnytsia region). Least of them are in Luhansk region (0.7%). Almost half of the ponds are located in the Dnieper River Basin (48.5%). The lowest quantity of ponds is in the Black Sea Basin (1.2%). The regulation of river basins districts (the rivers of the Sea of Azov, Crimea and Black Sea Basins) reaches 0.71–0.77. As of 2019, 28% of the ponds are rented out. In order to identify the real status of the ponds (both quantitative and qualitative), their recreational role, the environmental impact and the regulation of the hydrographic network in Ukraine, it is necessary to increase the attention to ponds monitoring.

Changes in river channel morphological parameters are influenced by anthropogenic factors, such as climatic changes, river catchment management changes, and hydrotechnical development of rivers. To assess the intensity of individual pressures and the resulting changes in abiotic and biotic factors in the riverbed, water quality monitoring is conducted, including the assessment of the hydromorphological status. The assessment can be based on the River Habitat Survey (RHS) which is a synthetic method that includes the evaluation of habitat character and river quality based on their morphological structure.
The input data, which characterise any river include physical features of hydrotechnical structures, bed granulation, occurrence of bedforms, visible morphodynamic phenomena, and a sediment transport pattern. The RHS method allows to determine two quantitative indices used to evaluate the hydromorphological status: Habitat Modification Score ( HMS), which determines the extent of transformation in the morphology of a watercourse, and Habitat Quality Assessment ( HQA), which is based on the presence and diversity of natural elements in a watercourse and river valley.
The proposed method can be divided into three stages. The first assesses the river section hydromorphological indices, describing the degree of technical modification ( HMS) and the ecological quality of the reach ( HQA), using the RHS method. The second stage describes morphological changes resulting from the technical regulation and estimates indices for the regulated reach. Finally, we compare HQA and HMS indices before and after the regulation. This comparison is described by numerical indicators and related to reference values.