Assessment of Seasonal Influence of Climate on Water Quality of River Damodar from Dishergarh to Bardhaman, West Bengal, India

The major objective of the present work was to determine whether or not the water quality status of the stretch of river Damodar from Dishergarh to Bardhaman changes in response to seasonality of prevailing climate. Database generated by Central Pollution Control Board which include 20 parameters with monthly frequency from 10 monitoring stations for the period of 4 years between 2014 and 2017 was used for statistical analysis by applying hierarchical cluster and Spearman’s Rank Correlation. The result shows that changing pattern of water quality status round the year forms four specific hydrogeochemical seasons which almost correspond to 4 climatological seasons which are defined by India Meteorological Department i.e., pre-monsoon, monsoon, post-monsoon and winter but with a lag of one month. The correlation result suggests that man-induced parameters (e.g., BOD) do not follow the seasonality while geogenic parameters (e.g., TDS, TSS etc.) are very much affected by precipitation which is a seasonal phenomenon controlled by climate.