Evaluation of surface water quality using multivariate techniques in terengganu river basin

Surface river water is seriously experiencing contamination which threatens human health, ecosystem and plants/animals life. Cluster analysis and principal component analysiswas used to evaluatethe spatial variation and contamination sources of surface water quality data sets initiated from Terengganu river basin and originated during 2003-2007 monitoring of 30 parameters at           13 sampling stations. CA grouped monitoring stations into two based on their similarity characteristics: low pollution source (LPS) and moderate pollution source (MPS). PCA yielded            8 varifactors with total variance of 73.62%. Besides, based on the land use activities PCA identifies mineral components, anthropogenic activities (agricultural, domestic sewage water, industrial waste) and natural processes (erosion and runoff) were the major pollution sources resulted in the variation of the river. Therefore, the results revealed the importance of multivariate statistical techniques for investigation and understanding the surface water quality.