Author(s): Qin Guoshuai; Liu Jianwei; Xu Shiguo; Wang Tianxiang
Linked Author(s): Guoshuai Qin
Keywords: Drought; Reservoir; Water quality; ANOVA; Correlation analysis
Abstract: Due to the impacts of climate change and human activities, extreme hydrological events such as floods and droughts occur frequently. Drought, as one of the major natural disasters that limits social development, influences not only the water quantity but also the water quality. In this paper, a drinking water reservoir in Northeastern China was studied to identify drought impacts on the physico-chemical water quality of the reservoir in 2014. The parameters of total nitrogen, total phosphorus, total iron, and electrical conductivity were relatively lower during the drought years. The ANOVA analysis result indicated that total nitrogen, total iron and electrical conductivity were significantly different between drought years and normal/wet years. The correlation analysis result showed total nitrogen and total iron were significantly correlated to hydrological factors. It can be concluded that the concentration of total nitrogen and total iron will decline during drought years with the decrease in pollutants input and preventing the non-point source pollutants input may be an effective measure to reduce the excessive total nitrogen load in the study reservoir. Drought will have a positive effect on the water quality of the non-point source pollution reservoirs within a short time, but the risks of endogenous pollution during the drought period and the large amounts of input pollutants in drought-flood abrupt change events should not be ignored.
Year: 2018