Case study Malaysia: Spatial water quality assessment of Juru, Kuantan and Johor River Basins using environmetric techniques

Abstract

This study investigates spatial water quality assessment of selected river basins in the three different states in Malaysia. Environmetric techniques namely, cluster analysis (CA), principal component analysis (PCA), and discriminant analysis (DA), were applied to study the spatial variations of the most significant water quality variables in order to determine the origin of pollution sources on water quality data of Juru River Basin, Kuantan River Basin and Johor River Basin. 13 water quality parameters were initially selected and analyzed. Three spatial clusters were formed based on CA, and these clusters were designated as high pollution source (HPS), medium pollution source (MPS), and low pollution source (LPS) at the three river basins, respectively. Forward and backward stepwise DA managed to discriminate water quality variables, respectively from the original 13 variables. The result of this spatial analysis assessment is supported by PCA (varimax functionality,) that was used to investigate the origin of each water quality variable due to land use activities. Thus, this analysis makes it possible to observe the significance of the pollutant sources which contribute to river pollution. Five principal components (PCs) were obtained for all HPS, MPS and LPS regions of all the three river basins, respectively. Pollution sources for the three river basins were mainly originated from industrial waste, municipal waste, domestics waste and also from agricultural runoffs. Finally, the environmetric techniques analysis manage to provide convincing result on the spatial variation of water quality in all the three studied river basins and this eventually will allow more effective and efficient river quality management activities.

Temporal Seasonal Variations and Source Apportionment of Water Pollution in Melaka River Basin using Multivariate Statistical Techniques

“…Biochemical oxygen demand valued in S2 with 7.33 mg/L, S7 with 6.33 mg/L, and S8 with 8.17 mg/L, to provide the result as class 4; In chemical oxygen demand and dissolved oxygen, the mean value showed as slightly polluted which suspected to be detected in S1 (COD = 42.17 mg/L; DO = 2.15 mg/L), S2 (COD = 28 mg/L; DO = 3.16 mg/L), and S7 (COD = 32.33 mg/L; DO = 3.69 mg/L) respectively, while others monitored stations remain as clean in the river basin. Overall, anthropogenic activities such as residential, municipal and domestic, industrial, agriculture, and livestock is carried out within the Melaka River basin [1,11,13,26]. In other words, these activities might be considered as major contribution of contamination to occur in the Melaka River.…”

“…These activities are transforming the forest field into agriculture and residential area. Simultaneously, several disturbances on the river physical characteristic through the activities of dredging, channelisation and irrigation would increase the riverbank erosion and indirectly enhance the physical contamination in the river [11,13,26]. During wet season, this circumstance would boost the amount of contamination in water which is due to the rapid surface runoff from elsewhere to end up in the river.…”

“…Nevertheless, frequent raining at study area had led to dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, and chemical oxygen demand to spread within the riverine system before the ammoniacal nitrogen began to grow within the basin. Generally, when organic matter is in the water, this will cause biological process to occur and increase the concentration of chemical oxygen demand in the river [13,26]. At the same time, these processes will also lead to a large consumption amount of dissolved oxygen or biochemical oxygen demand to undergo the anaerobic fermentation process, before producing the ammoniacal nitrogen and organic acid [13,26].…”

“…Generally, when organic matter is in the water, this will cause biological process to occur and increase the concentration of chemical oxygen demand in the river [13,26]. At the same time, these processes will also lead to a large consumption amount of dissolved oxygen or biochemical oxygen demand to undergo the anaerobic fermentation process, before producing the ammoniacal nitrogen and organic acid [13,26]. Surface runoff with high capacity during wet season are able to transport foreign substances (e.g.…”

“…Correlation analysis and PCA/FA techniques had been highlight by Prasanna et al [12] in the study of heavy metal pollution index and river water quality of Miri city (Malaysia), which is important to determine the potential sources of river water contamination. Moreover, these techniques had been widely used in other studies to classify and clustered the monitored sampling stations as well as to interpret the latent source of river water pollution [13][14][15][16]. Based on above literature studies, majority research using correlation analysis to verify relationships between the studied parameter of river water quality; while CA technique is to cluster the monitored stations that have similar characteristics based on water quality parameters; as well as FA/PCA technique is to define the source of water pollutants in the river.…”