What Are the Key Catchment Characteristics Affecting Spatial Differences in Riverine Water Quality?

A Lintern; JA Webb; D Ryu; S Liu; D Waters; P Leahy; U Bende-Michl; AW Western

Journal article

What Are the Key Catchment Characteristics Affecting Spatial Differences in Riverine Water Quality?

A Lintern, JA Webb, D Ryu, S Liu, D Waters, P Leahy, U Bende-Michl, AW Western

Water Resources Research | AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION | Published : 2018

DOI: 10.1029/2017WR022172

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Abstract

This study uses water-quality data collected over 20 years, from 102 predominantly rural sites across Victoria, Australia, to further our understanding of spatial variability in riverine water quality. We focus on concentrations of total suspended solids, total phosphorus, filterable reactive phosphorus, total Kjeldahl nitrogen, nitrate/nitrite (NOx), and electrical conductivity. We used an exhaustive search approach to identify the linear models that best link catchment characteristics to time-averaged constituent concentrations. We ran additional analyses to (1) assess the performance of these models under drought conditions, and (2) understand the key drivers of site-level variability (st..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Dongryeol Ryu Author

Andrew Western Author

Related Projects (2)

Predicting water quality at the catchment scale: learning from two decades of monitoring

Poor water quality affects many rivers and receiving waters such as the Great Barrier Reef and Gippsland Lakes. This project aims to use Bay..

Predicting water quality at the catchment scale: learning from two decades of monitoring

Poor water quality affects many rivers and receiving waters such as the Great Barrier Reef and Gippsland Lakes. This project aims to use Bay..

Grants

Awarded by Environment Protection Authority Victoria

Funding Acknowledgements

This project has been supported by the Australian Research Council and the Victorian Environment Protection Authority, the Victorian Department of Environment, Land Water and Planning, the Bureau of Meteorology, and the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines through the Linkage Program (LP140100495). The authors would also like to thank Matthew Johnson, Louise Sullivan, and Jie Jian for their assistance in data compilation and analysis. All water-quality data used for this project can be found on the Water Measurement Information System (http://data.water.vic.gov.au/monitoring.htm).Sources of the catchment characteristics data are provided in the reference list.