Die Bodenkultur - Journal for Land Management, Food and Environment

P. Miklanek, M. Martincova, M. Dosa and P. Pekarova:

Long term trend of water quality in the Bela river

Summary

Understanding how water quality evolves in undisturbed ‘reference’ catchments compared to catchments affected by anthropogenic activities is important with respect to a classification of the ecological potential and the status of surface stream waters. In this paper we use water quality data from the Bela River in Slovakia, covering a 20-year period (1991–2010). First, we analyzed the long-term trend of selected water quality parameters. Two nonparametric tests, the Mann-Kendall trend test and Sen’s slope test, were used to assess the significance of the detected trends. The observed trends suggest that quality of water in the Bela River has improved over the course of the analyzed period. In addition, we applied multi-regression methods to model selected water quality parameters. Key words: Bela River, stream water quality, Mann-Kendall trend test, multi-regression analysis.