Gauging of water quality using principal component analysis: A case study of the river Ganges at Allahabad

Abstract

An extensive investigation of physico-chemical parameters of water sample of Ganga River at different Ghats of Allahabad viz: Phaphamau, Daraganj ,Sangam and Chatnaag ghat during summer, monsoon and winter seasons in year 2013-14. Ten physico-chemical parameters as pH, Electrical Conductivity (EC), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total Alkalinity (TA), TotalHardness (TH), Total Dissolve Solids (T.D.S), Chloride and Turbidity were used to analyse the pollution index of Ganga River at Allahabad. Correlation Coefficient was calculated between different pairs of parameter to identify the highly correlated and interrelated water quality parameters(significance level 0.05) Principal component analysis (PCA) is most important a statistical method to ascertain the parameters responsible for variability in water quality variance. Two latent factors were identified as responsible for the data structure, explaining 98.81% of total variance in the dataset. First factor explained 87.79% of total variance in the dataset and the Second factor explained 11.02%of the total variance respectively.