Done by: Saad Fahad Aldossari

The name of Assessment of surface water quality via multivariate statistical techniques: A
study: case study of the Songhua River Harbin region, China
The aim of the To evaluate temporal/spatial variations in water quality and identify latent sources
current study: of water pollution in the Songhua River Harbin region.
The methodology:
Study design: Experimental study.
Setting: a. Location: Songhua River Harbin region, China.
b. The date of monitoring: 2005-2009
c. The duration of follow up for similar groups: 12 months.
Participants: The sources: Songhua River Harbin region.
The collection of There are six monitoring sites have been done. The aim from using this method to
sample and the cover a wide range of the entire Songhua River Harbin region.
sample size:
The water samples were collected monthly at three points (1/4, 1/2 and 3/4) across
the river width at all six sites during the study period, which it’s for 5 years (2005-
2009).

There are about more than 20 water quality parameters including dissolved oxygen
(DO) are available, only 15 parameters were selected due to their continuity in
measurement at all six monitoring sites.

The selected parameters included:

1. pH, nitrate (NO3eN).

2. Chemical oxygen demand (COD).

3. 5-day biological oxygen demand (BOD5).

4. Ammonium (NH4eN).

5. Copper (Cu).

6. Chromium (Cr6þ).

7. Zinc (Zn).

8. Total phosphorus (TP).

9. Arsenic (As).

10. Lead (Pb).

11. Water temperature (Temp).

 Done by: Saad Fahad Aldossari

12. Petroleum hydrocarbon (Oil).

13. Anionic surfactant (Anionic S).

14. Selenium (Se).

Hierarchical CA grouped the six monitored sites into three clusters (A,B and C)
based on their similarities, corresponding to regions of low pollution, moderate
pollution and high pollution. Then the groups with similar water quality
characteristics was followed for 12 months.

Type of test used: 1. PCA/FA: used to measure the water quality variation

2. KaisereMeyereOlkin (KMO): to determine the sampling adequacy of data

that are to be used for factor Analysis

3. Bartlett’s Sphericity tests: for sphericity compares the correlation matrix (a

matrix of Pearson correlations) to the identity matrix. In other words, it
checks if there is a redundancy between variables that can be summarized
with some factors.

The statistical  Type of test used:

analysis and the
analysis: 1. Spearman’s rank correlations: is a technique which can be used to
summarise the strength and direction (negative or positive) of
a relationship between two variables.

2. PCA/FA.

3. KaisereMeyereOlkin (KMO).

4. Bartlett’s Sphericity tests.

 CA assembles objects into aggregations based on their interdependent

variables or characteristics. The resulting clusters of objects should exhibit :

1. High internal (within-cluster) homogeneity.

2. High external (between-clusters) heterogeneity.

 Hierarchical agglomerative CA (HACA) is the most common approach to

classify variables or cases intuitively into clusters, by starting with the most
 Done by: Saad Fahad Aldossari

similar pair of objects and forming higher clusters step by step.

The results: The water quality variation mainly affected by:

 In low pollution areas of the Harbin region:

1. Organic pollution.

2. Nutrients (non-point sources: animal husbandry and agricultural

activities).

3. Temperature (natural).

4. Heavy metal.

5. Toxic pollution (point sources: industry).

 In moderate pollution areas of the Harbin region:

1. Oxygen consuming organic pollution (point sources: industry and

domestic wastewater).

2. Temperature (natural).

3. Heavy metal and petrochemical pollution (point source: industry),

4. Nutrients (non-point sources: agricultural activities, organic

decomposition and geologic deposits).

 In high pollution areas of the Harbin region:

1. Heavy metal, oil and petrochemical pollution (point source:

industry).

2. Oxygen consuming organic pollution (point source: domestic

sewage and wastewater treatment plants).

3. Nutrients (non- point sources: agricultural activities, runoff in soils).

How they validate The test used to make sure about the the suitability of the data for PCA/FA,
their accuracy KaisereMeyereOlkin (KMO) and Bartlett’s Sphericity tests were performed on the
and honesty of the parameter correlation matrix. KMO is a measure of sampling adequacy that
study results: indicates the proportion of variance that is common variance. A high value (close to
1) generally indicates that PCA/FA may be useful, as is the case in this study (KMO
1⁄4 0.817). Bartlett’s test of Sphericity indicates whether the correlation matrix is the
 Done by: Saad Fahad Aldossari

identity matrix, which would indicate that the parameters are unrelated.

CA, PCA and FA were applied to experimental data standardized through z-scale
(mean 1⁄4 1, variance 1⁄4 0) transformation in order to avoid misclassification due to
wide differences in data dimensionality.

The limitation of 1. There’s no enough clarification about the selection criteria for the sample.
this study:
2. They do not mentioned/ named of the devices which used to measure the
quantity of each parameters and water components.

3. The methodology was not clarifying at the method section very well.

4. The abstract of this study was not good at all based on critical appraisal
guideline for evaluating the researches.