Development of a water quality index (WQI) for the Loktak Lake in India

Applied Water Science, Jun 2017

The present work was carried out to assess a water quality index (WQI) of the Loktak Lake, an important wetland which has been under pressure due to the increasing anthropogenic activities. Physicochemical parameters like temperature (Tem), potential hydrogen (pH), electrical conductivity (EC), turbidity (T), dissolved oxygen (DO), total hardness (TH), calcium (Ca), chloride (Cl), fluoride (F), sulphate (\({\text{SO}}_{4}^{2-}\)), magnesium (Mg), phosphate (\({\text{PO}}_{4}^{3-}\)), sodium (Na), potassium (K), nitrite (NO2), nitrate (NO3), total dissolved solids (TDS), total carbon (TC), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and chemical oxygen demand (COD) were analyzed using standard procedures. The values obtained were compared with the guidelines for drinking purpose suggested by the World Health Organization and Bureau of Indian Standard. The result shows the higher concentration of nitrite in all the location which is beyond the permissible limit. Eleven parameters were selected to derive the WQI for the estimation of water potential for five sampling sites. A relative weight was assigned to each parameter range from 1.46 to 4.09 based on its importance. The WQI values range from 64 to 77 indicating that the Loktak Lake water is not fit for drinking, including both human and animals, even though the people living inside the Lake are using it for drinking purposes. The implementation of WQI is necessary for proper management of the Loktak Lake and it will be a very helpful tool for the public and decision makers to evaluate the water quality of the Loktak Lake for sustainable management.

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Development of a water quality index (WQI) for the Loktak Lake in India

Development of a water quality index (WQI) for the Loktak Lake in India Rajiv Das Kangabam 0 1 Sarojini Devi Bhoominathan 0 1 Suganthi Kanagaraj 0 1 Munisamy Govindaraju 0 1 0 Present Address: Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Assam Agricultural University , Jorhat, Assam 785013 , India 1 & Rajiv Das Kangabam The present work was carried out to assess a water quality index (WQI) of the Loktak Lake, an important wetland which has been under pressure due to the increasing anthropogenic activities. Physicochemical parameters like temperature (Tem), potential hydrogen (pH), electrical conductivity (EC), turbidity (T), dissolved oxygen (DO), total hardness (TH), calcium (Ca), chloride (Cl), fluoride (F), sulphate (SO24 ), magnesium (Mg), phosphate (PO34 ), sodium (Na), potassium (K), nitrite (NO2), nitrate (NO3), total dissolved solids (TDS), total carbon (TC), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and chemical oxygen demand (COD) were analyzed using standard procedures. The values obtained were compared with the guidelines for drinking purpose suggested by the World Health Organization and Bureau of Indian Standard. The result shows the higher concentration of nitrite in all the location which is beyond the permissible limit. Eleven parameters were selected to derive the WQI for the estimation of water potential for five sampling sites. A relative weight was assigned to each parameter range from 1.46 to 4.09 based on its importance. The WQI values range from 64 to 77 indicating that the Loktak Lake water is not fit for drinking, including both human and animals, even though the people living inside the Lake are using it for drinking purposes. The implementation of WQI is necessary for proper management of the Loktak Lake and it will be a Physicochemical parameters; Water quality index; Pearson's correlation matrix; Floating island; Loktak Lake - Department of Environmental Biotechnology, School of Environmental Sciences, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu 620024, India very helpful tool for the public and decision makers to evaluate the water quality of the Loktak Lake for sustainable management. Introduction Water quality is an important contributor touching on all aspects of ecosystems and human well-being and a significant tool in determining the human poverty, wealth, and education levels (UN Water 2010) . The ecosystem services of water from rivers and lakes are directly or indirectly contribute to both human welfare and aquatic ecosystem (Costanza et al. 1997; Kar 2007, 2013) . The increase in pollution of water sources like lakes and rivers is a major concern for the global scenario as most of the water bodies around the world are the source for water supply including human consumption and domestic purposes (Kazi et al. 2009; Dey and Kar 1987) . The health of the aquatic ecosystem is determined by the water quality parameter which includes the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics (Kar 1990; Sargaonkar and Deshpande 2003; Venkatesharaju et al. 2010) . Therefore, a particular problem with water quality monitoring is a complex issue associated with analyzing a large number of associate measures of variables (Boyacioglu 2007) and the high variability among the variables is due to increase in anthropogenic activities including natural influences (Simeonov et al. 2002) . The anthropogenic discharges constitute a constant polluting source, thereby reducing the water quality. Human activities are the major factor determining the quality of water (Niemi et al. 1990; Kar 2010) . Environmental pollution of water resources has become a major global issue, including developing countries which have been suffering from the impact of pollution due to poor socio economic growth associated with the exploitation of natural resources. As a result of it, water is considered as the highest risk to the world for future due to increase in demand as well as increase in pollution (Kar 2013; Global Risks 2015) . Many methods have been proposed and adopted for analysis of water quality. One of the most effective approaches for studying water quality is using of suitable indices (APHA 2005; Dwivedi and Pathak 2007) . Indices are measure of changes in a representative group of individual data points of various physicochemical and biological parameters in a given sample. The advantage of indices is that it has the potential to inform the general public and decision makers about the status of the ecosystem (Nasirian 2007; Simoes et al. 2008) . The benefit of this approach is the provision to evaluate the success and failure of any management plan for improving the water quality (Rickwood and Carr 2009) . A number of studies have reported the importance of water quality indices (WQI) which serve as an indicator for assessment of water quality as proposed for the first time by Horton (1965) . Later, numerous researchers have carried out studies on water quality assessmen (...truncated)


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Rajiv Das Kangabam, Sarojini Devi Bhoominathan, Suganthi Kanagaraj, Munisamy Govindaraju. Development of a water quality index (WQI) for the Loktak Lake in India, Applied Water Science, 2017, pp. 1-12, DOI: 10.1007/s13201-017-0579-4