Elements for a methodology to interpret hydrochemichal data

Abstract

The EWFD(European Water Framework Directive) mandates reaching a good status for water bodies. So, monitoring of our water sources in order to administer, protect and plan water use in associated areas is mandatory. In order to accomplish the EWFD objectives the Ag`encia Catalana de l’Aigua has a large ground water quality network monitoring points all over the territory. This network consists of a series of wells that measures a large number of parameters which lead to a huge amount of data to be interpreted. The size of the database poses a tremendous challenge for interpreting, and thus, there is a need to explore the possibility of improving data representation and initial data analysis. The aim of this thesis is to identify a series of techniques, tools or methods to ease a systematic interpretation of generic groundwater chemical data sets, assuming that the user might not be an expert in managing such kind of data. So, the following tasks have been performed: target area definition and study; techniques and tools decision; data acquisition, conversion and filtering and, finally, technique application. As a result of these process, an appropriate data format has shown to be be mandatory in order to correctly export the data set to the needed codes. When applied, the most easily understood techniques have usually been graphic methods. In some cases their interpretability has been conditioned by data quality or code lacks so both fields are intended to be improved in future work lines. These includes taking advantage of Aquachem’s modelling techniques and ArcGIS plotting advantages. On the other hand, the most interesting multivariate technique has been factor analysis, which has no unique interpretations and might have to be more studied in. So, on the whole, to validate the conclusions of this work it might be interesting to apply this same methodology on different data sets