The Selection of Monitoring Indicators for River Water Quality Assessment

A cost-effective river water monitoring method is vital when assessing the level of river health. In order to reduce the monitoring burden as much as possible under the condition that the quality status of water bodies was evaluated fully and accurately, the necessary monitoring indicators of Liaohe River and Xiangjiang River as well as their mainstreams and tributaries were selected according to exceeding standard rates and pollution contribute rates of indicators in this study. The water quality assessment results for the mainstreams of the above two rivers by using selected indicators were compared with that by using all indicators without selection. Compared with all indicators, the selected indicators are greatly reduced in number. Additionally, the selected indicators for Liaohe River have great difference with that for Xiangjiang River due to the different water pollution characteristics. The two water quality assessment results show the consistency generally which verified that it's a feasible way to select monitoring indicators by exceeding standard rate and pollution contribute rate. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B. V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of School of Environment, Beijing Normal University.