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Assessment of ground and surface water quality along the river Varuna, Varanasi, India

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Abstract

Multivariate statistical techniques were employed for monitoring of ground-surface water interactions in rivers. The river Varuna is situated in the Indo-Gangetic plain and is a small tributary of river Ganga. The study area was monitored at seven sampling sites for 3 years (2010–12), and eight physio-chemical parameters were taken into account for this study. The data obtained were analysed by multivariate statistical techniques so as to reveal the underlying implicit information regarding proposed interactions for the relevant area. The principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA), and the results of correlations were also studied for all parameters monitored at every site. Methods used in this study are essentially multivariate statistical in nature and facilitate the interpretation of data so as to extract meaningful information from the datasets. The PCA technique was able to compress the data from eight to three parameters and captured about 78.5 % of the total variance by performing varimax rotation over the principal components. The varifactors, as yielded from PCA, were treated by CA which grouped them convincingly into three groups having similar characteristics and source of contamination. Moreover, the loading of variables on significant PCs showed correlations between various ground water and surface water (GW-SW) parameters. The correlation coefficients calculated for various physiochemical parameters for ground and surface water established the correlations between them. Thus, this study presents the utility of multivariate statistical techniques for evaluation of the proposed interactions and effective future monitoring of potential sites.

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Acknowledgments

Pardeep Singh and Rishikesh Singh thank University Grants Commission and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Govt. of India for funding support. Pardeep Singh also thanks Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) for funding support. R.K. Chaturvedi thanks Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Govt. of India for funding support. D.D. Giri thanks University Grants Commission, Govt. of India for funding support. Authors also thank the two anonymous reviewers for reviewing the manuscript and offering helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), Varanasi, 221005, India

    Pardeep Singh, Lata Kumari & Dhanesh Tiwary

  2. Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 221005, India

    R. K. Chaturvedi & Rishikesh Singh

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, (Banaras Hindu University), Varanasi, 221005, India

    Ankit Mishra, D. B. Pal, Deen Dayal Giri & Pradeep Kumar Mishra

  4. Department of Chemistry, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 221005, India

    Nand Lal Singh

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  1. Pardeep Singh
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  2. R. K. Chaturvedi
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Correspondence to Pradeep Kumar Mishra.

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Singh, P., Chaturvedi, R.K., Mishra, A. et al. Assessment of ground and surface water quality along the river Varuna, Varanasi, India. Environ Monit Assess 187, 170 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-015-4382-0

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