Water Quality Monitoring: Identifying Critical Parameters

Abstract

The water quality in the middle stretch of River Kaduna, Nigeria was monitored for a period of 12 months in 15 sampling sites. Thirteen (13) water quality parameters were analyzed which include temperature, turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), pH, chloride (Cl-), and electrical conductivity (EC). Others are dissolved oxygen (DO), 5-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn). Results were subjected to Factor Analysis (FA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) via SPSS version 20. FA/PCA extracted 3 Principal Components(PCs) which explain 83.84% of the variation in the water quality. Turbidity, TDS, Cl- EC, DO, COD, TN and TP were identified to be the parameters strongly influencing thevariability of the river water quality as their absolute factor loading were greater than 0.75.