Spatial and temporal water quality dynamics of Awash River using multivariate statistical techniques

Awash River has important socio-economic and ecological values in Ethiopia. On the contrary, it is prone to serious water pollution. This study aims to assess the spatial and temporal variation of water quality of the river. Means of the 9 years’ (2005-2013) water quality dataset of 19 parameters from 10 stations in the basin were considered. After validating, normalizing and checking the sampling adequacy and internal consistency of the data, principal component analysis was computed and four principal components were generated. Factor loadings, correlations between variables and the principal factors as well as between sites and the principal factors were tabulated. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering done on the dataset resulted in four clusters based on similarity of water quality characteristics. The Mann-Kendall’s two tailed trend test detected temporal trends for total hardness in February over all sites and for most parameters in the basin in the 9 years period. Spatial analysis of the 14 sampling sites of the basin showed that as one moves from upper to lower parts of the basin, electrical conductivity, total hardness and chloride decrease in the dry season. However, total hardness slightly increases and total dissolved solids, chloride, and sulfate decrease in the rainy season.