Evaluation of groundwater quality in the rural environment using geostatistical analysis and WebGIS methods in a Hungarian settlement, Barand

The evaluation, visualization of environmental data from long-term monitoring, and making them accessible in a processed form in user-friendly interfaces on the Internet are important tasks of our time. The pollution of groundwater resources in settlements is a global phenomenon, the mitigation of which requires a number of environmental measures. In this study, water quality changes following the construction of a sewerage network were examined in the course of long-term monitoring between 2013 and 2022, during which 40 municipal groundwater wells were regularly sampled. Classifying the monitoring data into pollution categories based on water quality index (WQI) and degree of contamination index (Cd), a high degree of contamination was found in the period before the installation of the sewerage network (2014), as the majority of the wells were classified as contaminated and heavily contaminated. In the monitoring period following the installation of the sewerage network, a significant positive change was found in the case of most of the water chemical parameters tested (EC, NH4+, NO2-, NO3-, PO43-). Based on interpolated maps, it was found that an increasing part of the area shows satisfactory or good water quality. This was confirmed by the discriminant analysis as well, as it is possible to determine with an accuracy of 80.4% whether the given sample originates from the period before or after the installation of the sewerage network based on the given water chemical parameters. However, 8 years after setting up the sewerage network, the concentration of inorganic nitrogen forms and organic matter remains high, indicating that the accumulated pollutants in the area are still present. To understand the dynamics of purification processes, additional, long-term monitoring is necessary. Making these data available to members of the society can contribute to appropriate environmental measures and strategies.