STATISTICS IN PRACTICE A practical exploration of alternative approaches to analyzing water-related environmental issues Written by an experienced environmentalist and recognized expert in the field, this text is designed to help water resource managers and scientists to formulate, implement, and interpret more effective methods of water quality management. After presenting the basic foundation for using statistical methods in water resource management, including the use of appropriate hypothesis test procedures and some rapid calculation procedures, the author offers a range of practical problems and solutions on environmental topics that often arise, but are not generally covered. These include: * Formulating water quality standards * Determining compliance with standards * MPNs and microbiology * Water-related, human health risk modeling * Trends, impacts, concordance, and detection limits In order to promote awareness of alternative approaches to analyzing data, both frequentist and Bayesian, statistical methods are contrasted in terms of their applicability to various environmental issues. Each chapter ends with a number of set problems for which full answers are provided. The book also encourages discussion between technical staff and management before embarking on statistical studies.

Data on water quality and other environmental issues are being collected at an ever-increasing rate. In the past, however, the techniques used by scientists to interpret this data have not progressed as quickly. This is a book of modern statistical methods for analysis of practical problems in water quality and water resources.The last fifteen years have seen major advances in the fields of exploratory data analysis (EDA) and robust statistical methods. The 'real-life' characteristics of environmental data tend to drive analysis towards the use of these methods. These advances are presented in a practical and relevant format. Alternate methods are compared, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each as applied to environmental data. Techniques for trend analysis and dealing with water below the detection limit are topics covered, which are of great interest to consultants in water-quality and hydrology, scientists in state, provincial and federal water resources, and geological survey agencies.The practising water resources scientist will find the worked examples using actual field data from case studies of environmental problems, of real value. Exercises at the end of each chapter enable the mechanics of the methodological process to be fully understood, with data sets included on diskette for easy use. The result is a book that is both up-to-date and immediately relevant to ongoing work in the environmental and water sciences.

This book discusses a broad range of statistical design and analysis methods that are particularly well suited to pollution data. It explains key statistical techniques in easy-to-comprehend terms and uses practical examples, exercises, and case studies to illustrate procedures. Dr. Gilbert begins by discussing a space-time framework for sampling pollutants. He then shows how to use statistical sample survey methods to estimate average and total amounts of pollutants in the environment, and how to determine the number of field samples and measurements to collect for this purpose. Then a broad range of statistical analysis methods are described and illustrated. These include: * determining the number of samples needed to find hot spots * analyzing pollution data that are lognormally distributed * testing for trends over time or space * estimating the magnitude of trends * comparing pollution data from two or more populations New areas discussed in this sourcebook include statistical techniques for data that are correlated, reported as less than the measurement detection limit, or obtained from field-composited samples. Nonparametric statistical analysis methods are emphasized since parametric procedures are often not appropriate for pollution data. This book also provides an illustrated comprehensive computer code for nonparametric trend detection and estimation analyses as well as nineteen statistical tables to permit easy application of the discussed statistical techniques. In addition, many publications are cited that deal with the design of pollution studies and the statistical analysis of pollution data. This sourcebook will be a useful tool for applied statisticians, ecologists, radioecologists, hydrologists, biologists, environmental engineers, and other professionals who deal with the collection, analysis, and interpretation of pollution in air, water, and soil.

This book provides a compilation of statistical analysis methods used to analyze and assess critical variables in the hydrological cycle.

New York City's municipal water supply system provides about 1 billion gallons of drinking water a day to over 8.5 million people in New York City and about 1 million people living in nearby Westchester, Putnam, Ulster, and Orange counties. The combined water supply system includes 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes with a total storage capacity of approximately 580 billion gallons. The city's Watershed Protection Program is intended to maintain and enhance the high quality of these surface water sources. Review of the New York City Watershed Protection Program assesses the efficacy and future of New York City's watershed management activities. The report identifies program areas that may require future change or action, including continued efforts to address turbidity and responding to changes in reservoir water quality as a result of climate change.

This book presents the basic principles for evaluating water quality and treatment plant performance in a clear, innovative and didactic way, using a combined approach that involves the interpretation of monitoring data associated with (i) the basic processes that take place in water bodies and in water and wastewater treatment plants and (ii) data management and statistical calculations to allow a deep interpretation of the data. This book is problem-oriented and works from practice to theory, covering most of the information you will need, such as (a) obtaining flow data and working with the concept of loading, (b) organizing sampling programmes and measurements, (c) connecting laboratory analysis to data management, (e) using numerical and graphical methods for describing monitoring data (descriptive statistics), (f) understanding and reporting removal efficiencies, (g) recognizing symmetry and asymmetry in monitoring data (normal and log-normal distributions), (h) evaluating compliance with targets and regulatory standards for effluents and water bodies, (i) making comparisons with the monitoring data (tests of hypothesis), (j) understanding the relationship between monitoring variables (correlation and regression analysis), (k) making water and mass balances, (l) understanding the different loading rates applied to treatment units, (m) learning the principles of reaction kinetics and reactor hydraulics and (n) performing calibration and verification of models. The major concepts are illustrated by 92 fully worked-out examples, which are supported by 75 freely-downloadable Excel spreadsheets. Each chapter concludes with a checklist for your report. If you are a student, researcher or practitioner planning to use or already using treatment plant and water quality monitoring data, then this book is for you! 75 Excel spreadsheets are available to download.

This book covers water quality indices (WQI) in depth – it describes what purpose they serve, how they are generated, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and how to make the best use of them. It is a concise and unique guide to WQIs for chemists, chemical/environmental engineers and government officials. Whereas it is easy to express the quantity of water, it is very difficult to express its quality because a large number of variables determine the water quality. WQIs seek to resolve the difficulty by translating a set of a large number of variables to a one-digit or a two-digit numeral. They are essential in communicating the status of different water resources in terms of water quality and the impact of various factors on it to policy makers, service personnel, and the lay public. Further they are exceedingly useful in the monitoring and management of water quality. With the importance of water and water quality increasing exponentially, the importance of this topic is also set to increase enormously because only with the use of indices is it possible to assess, express, communicate, and monitor the overall quality of any water source. - Provides a concise guide to WQIs: their purpose and generation - Compares existing methods and WQIs and outlines strengths and weaknesses - Makes recommendations on how the indices should be used and under what circumstances they apply

The need to understand and quantify change is fundamental throughout the environmental sciences. This might involve describing past variation, understanding the mechanisms underlying observed changes, making projections of possible future change, or monitoring the effect of intervening in some environmental system. This book provides an overview of modern statistical techniques that may be relevant in problems of this nature. Practitioners studying environmental change will be familiar with many classical statistical procedures for the detection and estimation of trends. However, the ever increasing capacity to collect and process vast amounts of environmental information has led to growing awareness that such procedures are limited in the insights that they can deliver. At the same time, significant developments in statistical methodology have often been widely dispersed in the statistical literature and have therefore received limited exposure in the environmental science community. This book aims to provide a thorough but accessible review of these developments. It is split into two parts: the first provides an introduction to this area and the second part presents a collection of case studies illustrating the practical application of modern statistical approaches to the analysis of trends in real studies. Key Features: Presents a thorough introduction to the practical application and methodology of trend analysis in environmental science. Explores non-parametric estimation and testing as well as parametric techniques. Methods are illustrated using case studies from a variety of environmental application areas. Looks at trends in all aspects of a process including mean, percentiles and extremes. Supported by an accompanying website featuring datasets and R code. The book is designed to be accessible to readers with some basic statistical training, but also contains sufficient detail to serve as a reference for practising statisticians. It will therefore be of use to postgraduate students and researchers both in the environmental sciences and in statistics.

Water quality monitoring is an essential tool in the management of water resources and this book comprehensively covers the entire monitoring operation. This important text is the outcome of a collborative programme of activity between UNEP and WHO with inputs from WMO and UNESCO and draws on the international standards of the International Organization of Standardization.

This guidebook, now thoroughly updated and revised in its second edition, gives comprehensive advice on the designing and setting up of monitoring programmes for the purpose of providing valid data for water quality assessments in all types of freshwater bodies. It is clearly and concisely written in order to provide the essential information for all agencies and individuals responsible for the water quality.