A method for selecting monitoring wells and measured water-quality characteristics with application to the Liaohe River (China) groundwater system

Abstract

A new method for regional groundwater quality monitoring network design is presented in this study. The monitoring design is based on a limited number of preexisting monitoring wells and water-quality data from a previous monitoring. An arithmetic overlay model for the multiple environmental factor score index (MEFSI) was created principle component scores representing factors affected by different natural and anthropogenic processes. The number of constituents per well to be analyzed does not only depend on the MEFSI but also on the hydrogeological settings. We apply the proposed method to design a groundwater quality monitoring network for the lower Liaohe River Plain in NE China. The results showed that the relationship between the monitoring cost and the total sum of standard deviation of the MEFSI can be depicted by the trade-off curve obtained from the MEFSI kriging variance analysis experiments. The reduction monitoring well experiments show that removing the redundancy wells from preexisting monitoring network is specially suitable for the quaternary aquifers system. Our proposed method has strong potential application in designing a groundwater quality monitoring network for the regional quaternary aquifers with relatively homogeneous properties.