Geochemical Analysis of the Groundwater Quality along the Vrishabhavathi River Basin

Abstract

work carried out in collaboration between authors GNM and MHR. Author GNM performed the field work and chemical analysis in the laboratory, wrote the protocol and the first draft of the manuscript. Authors GNM and MHR designed the study and author MHR supervised the chemical analysis in the laboratory. Author DJ helped in the statistical study. All the three authors read and approved the final manuscript. ABSTRACT Aim: The Results: The detailed study of all the water quality variables is discussed in the paper. LSI calculation indicates that majorly 53% of the water samples are classified under the class ‘D’ [Slightly scale forming and corrosive] and 40% of the water samples fall under the group ‘E’ [Scale forming but non-corrosive]. Piper trilinear plot reveals that majorly Ca ++ and Mg ++ are the dominant cations and HCO 3- and Cl - are the dominant anions. Statistical measures such as Mean, SD, SE of sample means, coefficients of Skewness and Kurtosis have been computed using the statistical package to assess the characteristics of the selected water quality variables. Further, 95% confidence intervals have been obtained for the true means of these variables and water quality variables crossing the permissible limits of WHO [1993] have been identified using these confidence limits. Correlation study has been done to estimate the significance of the linear relationship between the pairs of variables at a given level of significance and thereby the set of water quality variables which are interlinked have been identified. Conclusion: The water quality variables which have/have the tendency to cross the permissible limits set by WHO [1993] have been identified using the confidence intervals. Through the Piper plot and LSI calculation, we can conclude that the groundwater samples are alkaline in nature and are not suitable for consumption.