Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Science (MS)

Major/Program

Environmental Studies

First Advisor's Name

Assefa Melesse

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Krishnaswam Jayachandran

Third Advisor's Name

René Price

Keywords

Biscayne Aquifer, GIS, kriging, spatiotemporal contaminant trends, nitrates, Broward, pollution index

Date of Defense

3-22-2013

Abstract

Continuous and reliable monitoring of contaminants in drinking water, which adversely affect human health, is the main goal of the Broward County Well Field Protection Program. In this study the individual monitoring station locations were used in a yearly and quarterly spatiotemporal Ordinary Kriging interpolation to create a raster network of contaminant detections. In the final analysis, the raster spatiotemporal nitrate concentration trends were overlaid with a pollution vulnerability index to determine if the concentrations are influenced by a set of independent variables. The pollution vulnerability factors are depth to water, recharge, aquifer media, soil, impact to vadose zone, and conductivity. The creation of the nitrate raster dataset had an average RMS Standardized error close to 1 at 0.98. The greatest frequency of detections and the highest concentrations are found in the months of April, May, June, July, August, and September. An average of 76.4% of the nitrate intersected with cells of the pollution vulnerability index over 100.

Identifier

FI13042335

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