Assessment of Spatial Variation of Groundwater Quality and Its Relationship With Land Use in Perth Metropolitan英文文献资料.docVIP

Journal of Water Resource and Protection, 2011, 3, 311-317 doi:10.4236/jwarp.2011.35039 Published Online May 2011 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jwarp) Assessment of Spatial Variation of Groundwater Quality and Its Relationship with Land Use in Perth Metropolitan Priyantha Ranjan Sarukkalige Department of Civil Engineering, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia E-mail: P.Sarukkalige@.au Received March 3, 2011; revised April 7, 2011; accepted May 1, 2011 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 ar- eas 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) guide- lines and the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG), several areas including rural areas like Cara- booda 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. Keywords: Groundwater, Quality, Land Use, Perth 1. Introduction and contamination of groundwater [5-8]. There are widely using tools such as Multivariate statistics analysis to analyze the variations in water quality and sources of contamination [9-11].