Assessment of seasonal variations in water quality of Brahmani river using PCA

Abstract

Assessment of seasonal changes in surface water quality is an important aspect for evaluating temporal variations of river pollution due to natural or anthropogenic inputs of point and non-point sources. In this study, surface water quality data for 15 physico-chemical parameters collected from 7 monitoring stations in a river during the years from 2014 to 2016 were analyzed. The principal component analysis technique was employed to evaluate the seasonal correlations of water quality parameters, while the principal factor analysis technique was used to extract the parameters that are most important in assessing seasonal variations of river water quality. Analysis shows that a parameter that is most important in contributing to water quality variation for one season may not be important for another season except alkalinity, which is always the most important parameters in contributing to water quality variations for all three seasons.