Effects of Land Use, Topography and Socio-Economic Factors on River Water Quality in a Mountainous Watershed with Intensive Agricultural Production in East China

Understanding the primary effects of anthropogenic activities and natural factors on river water quality is important in the study and efficient management of water resources. In this study, analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Principal component analysis (PCA), Pearson correlations, Multiple regression analysis (MRA) and Redundancy analysis (RDA) were applied as an integrated approach in a GIS environment to explore the temporal and spatial variations in river water quality and to estimate the influence of watershed land use, topography and socio-economic factors on river water quality based on 3 years of water quality monitoring data for the Cao-E River system. The statistical analysis revealed that TN, pH and temperature were generally higher in the rainy season, whereas BOD(5), DO and turbidity were higher in the dry season. Spatial variations in river water quality were related to numerous anthropogenic and natural factors. Urban land use was found to be the most important explanatory variable for BOD(5), COD(Mn), TN, DN, NH(4) (+)-N, NO(3) (−)-N, DO, pH and TP. The animal husbandry output per capita was an important predictor of TP and turbidity, and the gross domestic product per capita largely determined spatial variations in EC. The remaining unexplained variance was related to other factors, such as topography. Our results suggested that pollution control of animal waste discharge in rural settlements, agricultural runoff in cropland, industrial production pollution and domestic pollution in urban and industrial areas were important within the Cao-E River basin. Moreover, the percentage of the total overall river water quality variance explained by an individual variable and/or all environmental variables (according to RDA) can assist in quantitatively identifying the primary factors that control pollution at the watershed scale.