Selection and grouping of indicators of water quality using Multivariate Statistics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5433/1679-0359.2013v34n5p2025Keywords:
Principal component analysis, Cluster analysis, Water quality.Abstract
Multivariate statistics techniques (Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis) were employed to select the most important parameters that explain water quality variability at a rural watershed in the state of Espírito Santo (Brazil). In addition to group the waters studied for the similarity of features selected to verify the effect of type of soil cover (agriculture, livestock, forest and urban), water resource (surface and underground) and sampling period (rainy and dry seasons). Nineteen physico-chemical parameters of water quality were analyzed: pH, electrical conductivity, total solids, total dissolved solids, total suspended solids, turbidity, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), ammoniacal nitrogen, nitrate, nitrite, total phosphorous, Ca, Mg, Fe, Na, K, Zn, Cu and total coliform. Application of Principal Component Analysis reduced the 19 parameters to three components that explained 87.53% of the total variance of data set. Water quality parameters that best explained variability of data were: electrical conductivity, total solids, total dissolved solids, turbidity, BOD, nitrate, Ca, Mg, and Na. Application of Cluster Analysis showed four different groups of water quality that differed in concentration of physicochemical characteristics and the type of water resource study, since the collection periods and the type of soil cover did not influence the segregation of groups formed.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Semina: Ciências Agrárias adopts the CC-BY-NC license for its publications, the copyright being held by the author, in cases of republication we recommend that authors indicate first publication in this journal.
This license allows you to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, remix, transform and develop the material, as long as it is not for commercial purposes. And due credit must be given to the creator.
The opinions expressed by the authors of the articles are their sole responsibility.
The magazine reserves the right to make normative, orthographic and grammatical changes to the originals in order to maintain the cultured standard of the language and the credibility of the vehicle. However, it will respect the writing style of the authors. Changes, corrections or suggestions of a conceptual nature will be sent to the authors when necessary.
