Water quality assessment of ciénaga de la Virgen (Cartagena, Colombia) applying multivariate statistical techniques
Contextualization: Water is one of the most important natural resources for life and is most impacted daily by the communities surrounding the bodies of water.
Knowledge gap: Environmental authorities rarely use multivariate statistical analyzes to examine regional water quality, which is an important tool for environmental decision-making.
Purpose: To determine the variation of the water quality of the Cienaga de la Virgen through the use of multivariate statistical methods to data collected from the year 2009 to 2017.
Methodology: the samples were taken in the cienaga monthly, then in the laboratory the concentrations of Ammonium (NH4+), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), pH, Total Phosphorus (TP), Salinity, Total Coliforms (TC), fecal coliforms (FC), total suspended solids (TSS) were analyzed. Multivariate analyzes such as correlation matrix, principal component analysis, boxplots, and cluster were applied to the collected data.
Results and conclusions: Multivariate data analysis showed different behaviors of water quality around the coastal lagoon and the strongest contamination factors are high levels of BOD5 and total and fecal coliforms. Both factors related to wastewater and solid waste. Conclusions: the greatest contamination in the swamp is caused by the community and its poorly treated waste, it is necessary to start awareness days in the Cartagena community on issues of water care in order to preserve this important water resource for the city.