Investigating Spatio-temporal Changes in Groundwater Quality for London
Between 2000-2020
Abstract
The groundwater is relatively a pure natural resource as compared to the
surface water, but anthropogenic activities pose a threat to its purity
and suitability for drinking purpose. Thus, monitoring of spatial and
temporal variation of groundwater quality is very important for its
management and protection. Geographical Information System (GIS) and
statistics can be useful to monitor and evaluate the groundwater
quality. For London, there is no comprehensive work in the last two
decades for studying the spatio-temporal variation for monitoring
groundwater quality and its parameters. We have used data samples from
over 500 wells in London basin and the data is provided in free open
access domain by Environment Agency. The Trilinear-Piper plot
highlighted overall groundwater as dominant magnesium bicarbonate type.
To study spatio-temporal variation in London’s groundwater quality,
several water quality parameters were considered, for example, nitrates,
nitrites, hardness, sodium, Dissolved Oxygen (DO) and others. The
concentration of nitrates and nitrites in groundwater were less than 10
mg/l and 0.02 mg/l respectively, at all times (except outliers), during
our observation period i.e between the years 2000 and 2020. The
groundwater hardness, sodium and DO varied between 50 mg/l to 2363 mg/l,
11 to 308 mg/l and 0 to 10.7 mg/l respectively. The spatial variation
maps showed that there are localised patches of groundwater above
acceptable Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) limits, but overall
London’s groundwater is of potable status. The variations in the range
of each constituent were attributed to variation in geology of the
London palaeogene aquifers and anthropogenic activities. The Pearson
correlation coefficients showed that hardness and sodium are negatively
corelated and, DO and sodium are also negatively correlated. The study
can act as a guide for decision making and to flag contaminate of
concern. It can be helpful to outline the suitability of groundwater for
its intended purpose, identifying pollution inputs and assessing any
spatio-temporal changes.