Exploring the effects of urban and agricultural land use on surface water chemistry, across a regional watershed, using multivariate statistics

Abstract

In this paper, the influence of anthropogenic activity on surface water chemistry is investigated. Base flow samples from dominant land use streams in the Muskegon River Watershed, Michigan, USA, were analyzed for nutrients, major ions, and trace elements. Principal component and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to investigate the processes controlling the effects of land use on the biogeochemistry of streams in this Watershed. Biogeochemical fingerprints of land use were developed based on the results of the cluster analysis. Spider diagrams which referenced the natural environment aided the identification of the individual contributions of urban and agricultural land uses to surface water chemistry. The biogeochemical fingerprints quantified support previous findings (Urb: Na, K, Cl/Ag: Ca, Mg) and produced new insights into the effects of land use on the behavior of nutrients (Ag: N and Urb: N, P) and trace elements (Urb: V, Cr, Co, Cu, Se, Rb, Mo, Sr, Cd, Pb and Ba/Ag: U and As). The higher correlations of urban than agricultural land uses with nutrients, specifically P, were not expected and may reflect the effects of fertilization and wastewater or the season the samples were taken. More study in different geologic and urban settings is needed to help refine these fingerprints, but it is becoming apparent that despite obscuring factors, land use produces consistent, quantifiable associations between biogeochemical analytes.