Spatial and Temporal Variation of Ground Water Pollutants of Jalandhar District of Punjab

Abstract

Groundwater pollution occurs when pollutants make their way down into the ground and exploit the quality of ground water. An experimental study was conducted to determine the level of contamination in the groundwater of Jalandhar district of Punjab. Inverse distance weighted (IDW) method was used to find out spatial variation of 9 water quality parameters of 14 sampling sites in the Jalandhar district. Temporal variation of all these water quality parameters was also done by comparing the data of previous four-years (2015-2018). Through laboratory experimentation it was found that pH, Total dissolved solids (TDS), Electrical Conductivity (EC), Sulphate, Chloride, Nitrate and Iron all were found within the desirable limits of drinking water quality parameters. In ground points G1, G5 and G8 the concentration of Bicarbonate ion was above the permissible limit of 250 mg/l and in G5 the Alkalinity of water was more than the desirable limit of drinking water quality i.e. 600 mg/l. The spatial distribution maps show that in the South East part of the Jalandhar district water was Alkaline in nature, with high value of Total Hardness (TH), Sulphate ion, Chloride ion and TDS. This summarizes that the water quality of this region is not good as compared to the rest of the district. As the sampling was done in two seasons and tests were performed on 9 parameters of water quality, it was found that concentration of all parameters was high in the summers in comparison to the winters.