Assessment of Spatial Variation of Groundwater Quality and Its Relationship With Land Use in Perth Metropolitan
- 1
Abstract
To determine the effects of land use on groundwater quality in Western Australia, a quantitative analysis is carried out using groundwater quality data supplied by the Department of Water from over 500 groundwater wells across the Perth metropolitan area. We analyzed four main groundwater quality indicators; nutrients, physical parameters, inorganic non metals and trace metals. We found that groundwater beneath agricultural land was found to be particularly susceptible to nutrient loading due to the application of fertilizers. Nutrient levels were found to be rising over time due to increasing agriculture and urban development. Industrial areas were also found to have numerous contamination plumes that continue to migrate with the groundwater flow. According to Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council (ANZECC) guidelines and the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG), several areas including rural areas like Carabooda lake, Gnangara and Jandakot Mounds, Cockburn Sound, Forrestdale, Joondalup, and Ellenbrook and high density urban areas like Balcatta and Neerabup, industrial areas like North Fremantle, Welshpool and Kwinana are indentified as the vulnerable areas for groundwater quality.
- National Water Commission, “Groundwater Management Challenges: The Gnangara Mound,” Western Australia - Case Study, 2007.
- National Water Commission, “Australian Water Resource Assessment,” Commonwealth of Australia, 2005.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Regional Population Growth Rate - Australia 2006 - 2007,” 2008. http://www.abs.gov.au
- Waters and Rivers Commission, “Water Facts,” Pub- lication of the Government of Western Australia, Perth, 1998.
- D. A. V. Eckhardt and P. E. Stackelberg, “Relation of Ground-Water Quality to Land Use on Long Island, New York,” Ground Water, Vol. 33, No. 6, 1995, pp. 1019- 1031. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6584.1995.tb00047.x
- P. Hudak and S. Blanchard, “Land Use and Groundwater Quality in the Trinity Group Outcrop of North Central Texas,” Environment International, Vol. 23, No. 4, 1997, pp. 507-517. doi:10.1016/S0160-4120(97)00053-6
- K. K. Gardner and R. M. Vogel, “Predicting Groundwater Nitrate Concentration from Land Use,” Ground Water, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2005, pp. 343-352. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6584.2005.0031.x
- D. N. Lerner and B. Harris, “The Relationship between Land Use and Groundwater Resources and Quality,” Land Use Policy, Vol. 26, Supplement 1, 2009, pp. S265-S273. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.09.005
- K. Skeppstrom and B. Olofsson, “A Prediction Method for Radon in Groundwater Using GIS and Multivariate Sta- tistics,” Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 367, No. 2-3, 2006, pp. 666-680. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2006.02.044
- E. M. de Andrade, H. A. Q. Palácio, et al., “Land Use Effects in Groundwater Composition of an Alluvial Aqu- ifer (Trussu River, Brazil) by Multivariate Techniques,” Environmental Research, Vol. 106, No. 2, 2008, pp. 170- 177. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2007.10.008
- M. Chen, R. M. Price, Y. Yamashita and R. Jaffe, “Com- parative Study of Dissolved Organic Matter from Gro- undwater and Surface Water in the Florida Coastal Ever- glades Using Multi-Dimensional Spectrofluorometry Com- bined with Multivariate Statistics,” Applied Geochemistry, Vol. 25, No. 6, 2010, pp. 872-880. doi:10.1016/j.apgeochem.2010.03.005
- W. A. Davidson, “Hydrogeology and Groundwater Re- sources of the Perth Region, Western Australia,” Geo- logical Survey of Western Australia, Perth, 1995.
- S. J. Appleyard, P. Manning and P. Thorpe, “Pest Control Deposits as Sources if Groundwater Contamination in Perth, Western Australia,” Land Contamination and Re- clamation, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1997, pp. 292-305.