Assessment of Seasonal Variations in Surface Water Quality of Cooum River in Chennai, India – A Statistical Approach

Abstract

<div> <p>Rapid development in industrial sectors and population expansion has adverse impact on the <em>Cooum </em>river basin, especially Chennai region. The present study focuses on the assessment of seasonal variation in surface water quality of <em>Cooum </em>river basin. The samples were collected seasonally and are categorized as pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon during March 2013 to March 2014. Eighteen physicochemical parameters were assessed for eleven different samples collected along the channel of C<em>ooum</em> river basin. Statistical tools such as correlation analysis scatter plots, box plot and multivariate tools such as cluster analysis and principal component analysis were applied to categorize the <em>Cooum</em> river water quality. From the data sets, the ionic concentration, organic loads exhibits positive correlation (R<sup>2</sup>>0.7) for all three seasons. Also, box plot and scatter plot results revealed that during post-monsoon season the ionic concentration along with organic and inorganic levels were slightly higher than monsoon and pre-monsoon. Similarly, multivariate statistical tools such as principle component analysis (PCA) indicate that the ionic concentrations and organic load contributed more than 50% of variance while cluster analysis (CA) reveals that nature of pollutant load among the sites.</p> </div> <p> </p>