Abstract
The availability of fresh groundwater resources and quality are threatened by seawater intrusion due to an increase in population and overexploitation of groundwater in coastal areas worldwide. This study is to discriminate against salinization and source of contamination. An endeavor has been made to explain the nature of groundwater as far as physio-chemical factors in both seasons (pre- and postmonsoons). The study region is placed in the southeastern coastal plains of the Coromandel Coast of Pondicherry, South India and geologically having large portions are extended alluvium and Cuddalore sandstone, very small portion is occurring in charnockite rock. Groundwater samples are collected and analyzed the physical and major chemical parameters and analyzed results are assessed and compared with the WHO drinking standard. The analytical data are interpretations of the Piper trilinear graph to comprehend the hydrogeochemical processes affecting water quality. There are myriad methods are available to identify the salinity sources of which ionic ratios are one of the important and common indicators such as Ca/Mg, SO4/Cl, K/Cl, HCO3/Cl, Na/Cl, Cl/(CO3+HCO3), Ca/(HCO3+SO4) and Na/Ca applied to distinguish different salinity sources. The source of contamination is checked by Pearson’s correlation coefficient for demonstrating the quality and trend of a linear relationship between TDS with other elements. In this study, TDS is positive and strongly correlated with Ca (0.852), Mg (0.887), and Cl (0.930) and negatively correlated with HCO3 (−0.287) in postmonsoon and highly correlated with Cl (0.916), Ca (0.878), and Na (0.773) in the premonsoon season. The ionic ratio results show that overall the study region is less affected by salinity.
Published Version
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