Seasonal Variation of Water quality and Heavy Metal Pollution Index: A case study

Abstract

Pond as an ecosystem plays crucial role in growing cities, not only to recharge ground water but also facilitate urban residents in terms of ensuring livelihood. Leading urbanisation and continuous anthropogenic activities pollute water sources and affect human and aquatic lives. Due to lack of opulent research studies in Indian cities on water quality of ponds in different seasons and subsequent effect on the ecosystem, the current study attempted to answer contagion conditions of HPI and its affect. It also aims to suggest new evidence-based recommendation to get included in the sustainable water policies against the SDG target 6.3. The longitudinal study was conducted in one of the rapidly growing cities of India, where around 30 big ponds exist. Eight Heavy metals i.e., Iron, Zinc, Manganese, Copper, Cadmium, Cobalt, Lead and Nickle, were investigated during 2016-17 spreading up all seasons, in a standard laboratory testing for 5 selected aquatic ponds. Testing was done for all round of sample in ICP-MS.7700 method and data were processed in SPSS. Descriptive statistics and correlation were tested, and HPI are estimated to interpret the water quality. Results shows that iron, manganese, copper content in the water was more in monsoon and pre-monsoon seasons in all studied ponds. Zn, Cd, Co, Pb, Ni were reported less than permissible limit. Highly positive correlation is found between copper and Zinc, medium for cobalt and cadmium, Lead with Zinc, lead with copper . The HPI index is not good for all the studied ponds in monsoon. Hence, wastewater and stormwater must be contaminated free from heavy metals before adding to the ponds to maintain the water level quality.