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Spatial and seasonal characteristics of river water chemistry in the Taizi River in Northeast China

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Abstract

Anthropogenic activities have led to water quality deterioration in many parts of the world, especially in Northeast China. The current work investigated the spatiotemporal variations of water quality in the Taizi River by multivariate statistical analysis of data from the 67 sampling sites in the mainstream and major tributaries of the river during dry and rainy seasons. One-way analysis of variance indicated that the 20 measured variables (except pH, 5-day biological oxygen demand, permanganate index, and chloride, orthophosphate, and total phosphorus concentrations) showed significant seasonal (p ≤ 0.05) and spatial (p < 0.05) variations among the mainstream and major tributaries of the river. Hierarchical cluster analysis of data from the different seasons classified the mainstream and tributaries of the river into three clusters, namely, less, moderately, and highly polluted clusters. Factor analysis extracted five factors from data in the different seasons, which accounted for the high percentage of the total variance and reflected the integrated characteristics of water chemistry, organic pollution, phosphorous pollution, denitrification effect, and nitrogen pollution. The results indicate that river pollution in Northeast China was mainly from natural and/or anthropogenic sources, e.g., rainfall, domestic wastewater, agricultural runoff, and industrial discharge.

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment in China (grant no. 2008ZX07526-001). The authors express their sincerest gratitude to Drs. Xiaodong Qu, Weijing Kong, and Nan Zhang for their valuable discussion, Xiaobo Jia and Libin Chen for their assistance during the fieldwork, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Related Land Surface Processes, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Datun Road, A 11, Beijing, 100101, People’s Republic of China

    Hongmei Bu

  2. Laboratory of Riverine Ecological Conservation and Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China

    Wei Meng & Yuan Zhang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China

    Wei Meng & Yuan Zhang

Authors
  1. Hongmei Bu
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  2. Wei Meng
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  3. Yuan Zhang
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Correspondence to Hongmei Bu or Wei Meng.

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Bu, H., Meng, W. & Zhang, Y. Spatial and seasonal characteristics of river water chemistry in the Taizi River in Northeast China. Environ Monit Assess 186, 3619–3632 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-014-3644-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-014-3644-6

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