Deconvolution of water chemistry concentrations into components: background, anthropogenic, and resulting from changes in meteorological parameters

Abstract

Summary Following most EU countries, Ukraine implements the ecological principle of water resources management, the main purpose of which is to achieve a “good” ecological status for all water bodies. The High ecological status corresponds to the natural conditions of aquatic ecosystems, when indicators of the water chemistry are within their natural concentrations. Considering the current anthropogenic pressure, the ranges of natural variability of concentrations are important, being a natural background. The main goal of this work was to develop a new stochastic approach to estimating background concentrations. Using the convolution theory and random processes theory, at the first stage, we developed an algorithm for separating the actual concentrations of water chemistry parameters into natural and anthropogenic components. At the second stage, the task was to take into account changes in meteorological parameters during the deconvolution of actual concentrations. The result of this work is a methodology that would allow separating the actual concentrations of water chemistry not only into the background and anthropogenic components but also assess the component resulting from changes in meteorological parameters. Practical application of the developed technique has been demonstrated on the example of sulfate ions in the water of the Bilenka river.