Department Seminars

General Information

When: Thursdays from 4:00–4:50 p.m.
Where: 1170 TMCB

Abdel El-Shaarawi
Environment Canada and
McMaster University

2007-11-29

Upstream-Downstream Water Quality Monitoring

A typical approach for assessing temporal and spatial changes in the water quality of a river system is to monitor the concentrations of relevant pollutants routinely at a sequence of hierarchical locations. Thus, an upstream location serves as a reference for a downstream location indicating how water quality has been modified by input sources between the two locations. Several examples will be used to illustrate a general framework for the statistical analysis of data generated by this approach. Difficulties regarding data analysis are emphasized and addressed. A likelihood-based methodology is presented for analysis of data on pollutant concentration and their ratio. Areas where more work is needed will be indicated.