Chemometrics in Water Quality Criteria and Appraisal

Water quality is extremely important for a number of reasons from the protection of marine organisms and the well being of marine ecosystems to the health of people in the region and the safety of industries such as aquaculture. As a result it is essential that environmental health in water body is monitored. Traditional monitoring methods include assessment of biological indices or direct measurements of water quality, which are based on in situ data collection and hence are often spatially or temporally limited. But the complexity of information requires new analysis techniques that allow us to identify the components and possible causes of spatial and temporal variability. An overview of the application of chemometric data analysis methods to complex chemical mixtures in various environmental media is presented. This paper presents a review of selected research given as examples of the application of principal components analysis and other statistical methods to identify contributions from multiple sources of contamination. This review identifies how these methods can be utilized to address water quality variability in order to foster a wider application of such techniques for water quality assessment and monitoring.