Chapter 10
Analysis of Water Quality Random Variables
Publication: Statistical Analysis of Hydrologic Variables: Methods and Applications
Abstract
The topic of water quality distribution is as large as the topic of water quantity distribution. This chapter focuses on the special characteristics and practical applications of water quality random variables. It discusses the most commonly used distributions, both continuous and discrete, as well as nonparametric characterization using quantiles. This chapter provides a comparison of probability sampling and stochastic processes/serial correlation and discusses seasonal and flow effects. Because water quality at a particular location in time and space is characterized by a large number of measurements, it is often desirable to reduce the number of dimensions using a multivariate approach. The most common of these is principal component analysis (PCA). In PCA, correlation among n variables is used to replace the original set of variables with a new set of n variables, each of which is a linear combination of the original set.
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Statistical Analysis of Hydrologic Variables: Methods and Applications
Pages: 381 - 405
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© 2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Published online: May 14, 2019
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