TITLE:
Exploratory Analyses for Water Quality of the Gulf of Mexico Basin, Texas, 2005-2014
AUTHORS:
Faye Anderson, Najla N. J. Al-Thani
KEYWORDS:
Surface Water, Water Quality, Gulf of Mexico Basin, Texas, Multivariate, Spatial, Stormwater Flooding, Community Adaptive Capacity, Resilience
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.4 No.1,
January
12,
2016
ABSTRACT: With the
increased demand for more water sources, the issues of water quality have
become more important. This study presents exploratory data analyses on water
quality issues related to the Gulf of Mexico Basin in Texas for the last
decade: 2005-2014. Dissolved oxygen, water temperature, specific conductance,
PH, transparency, sampling depth and Enterococci observations for the ten years from 2005 to 2014 were analyzed. Statistical
testing showed that the observations followed similar distributions between the
years. Thus they were combined for each of the variables. Throughout the ten
years transparency, water temperature, specific conductance, and Enterococci showed higher variances.
Pair-wise correlations were negligible but they had positive spatial autocorrelation.
Sampling was constantly conducted in the four months of February, May, August,
and November. Water temperature, dissolved oxygen and Enterococci concentrations varied significantly during these four
months. Univariate spatial regressions showed that Enterococci is predicted to increase whereas dissolved oxygen, PH,
water temperature, specific conductances were predicted to decrease.