The Han River is taking an important role as a water supply source to the residents of Seoul Metropolitan area as well as a water source for the agricultural and industrial use. However, recent industrialization and urbanization of the basin of the Ha...
The Han River is taking an important role as a water supply source to the residents of Seoul Metropolitan area as well as a water source for the agricultural and industrial use. However, recent industrialization and urbanization of the basin of the Han River made the industry and the surrounding area crowded, which have caused complicated and diversified environmental pollution sources. The purpose of this study is to understand the present situation of the water quality and the variation patterns through the water quality analysis of the Han River watersheds'' pollutants in order to suggest the future direction of water quality management hereafter. 14 years'' of data set from the Ministry of Environment from January, 1989 to 2003 were analyzed to study the characteristics of water quality changes at the major Han River watersheds, Uiam-dam, Chungju-dam, Paldang-dam, Noryangjin, and Gayang. Analysis was focused to find the correlation between the environmental pollution materials. There was a significant difference in the concentration of pollutants between the upper and down stream. The concentrations at the down stream points was decreasing mainly due to the precipitation. The result from the correlation analysis showed that BOD and COD had a strong positive correlation with a correlation coefficient of 0.945 while the water temperature and DO had a negative correlation with a correlation coefficient of -0.564. The other pollution materials also had significant correlations particularly on COD, T-N and T-P categories. This suggested that COD, T-N and T-P categories should be included in addition to BOD in establishing indices. The data set used for conducting water quality and the correlation analysis were collected by once-a-month measurement, thus, the number of data was not enough to presume the causes of the changes. There should be a more discussion about a system that can reconfirm the measured water quality data to construct the scientific water quality monitoring operation system and reliable data system both for flood and dry seasons in establishing the water quality conservation policy.