Real-time monitoring of water quality to identify pollution pathways in small and middle scale rivers

Abstract

The quality standards for surface waters increase steadily bearing new challenges for water policy. Precise knowledge of the sources and transport pathway of various impacts in a catchment area is of particular importance for any management activities. Online measurements with high temporal resolution are particularly suited for this purpose especially in small and middle scale catchments. In this paper we present an approach applying mobile measuring stations in which commercial available sensors and wet chemical analysers are combined in a new set to enable real-time monitoring of various parameters. The resulting data and the interpretation of their relationships allow the identification of diverse pollution situations in a river. In this paper some examples of impacts from diffuse and point sources are given to illustrate the high information density obtained through the use of this system.

Keywords: Diffuse and point sources; Mobile station; Online measurement; Pollution; Sensor; Wet chemical analyser.