A Study of Groundwater Characteristics by Using of Groundwater Quality Index and Pollution Index in Zubair District, Basra Province, Iraq

The present work evaluated the groundwater quality index (GWQI) depending on some physicochemical analyses of thirteen groundwater samples in the Zubair district in Basra Province, Iraq. The collected groundwater samples were subjected to an extensive physicochemical analysis to evaluate the characteristics of water for drinking purpose according to Iraqi standard. For calculating the (GWQI), twelve water quality parameters were considered; turbidity, pH, chloride, total dissolved solids, total hardness (TH), electrical conductivity (EC), sodium, sulphate, phosphate, calcium, nitrate, and magnesium. The analysis of the results reveals that all the samples surpassed the portability of drinking water limits. High values of the (GWQI) in the obtained groundwater samples could possibly be caused by the higher values of electrical conductivity, total hardness, chloride, total dissolved solids and sodium within the groundwater. The calculated GWQI values ranged from 73.36 to 595.92. The pollution index (PI) was calculated for the study area with values ranged from 2.97 to 8.26. Correlation coefficients amongst the chosen water parameters exhibited some strong relationships. Finally, the analysis shows that the groundwater in this particular area needs to be treated before its consumption, and in addition, it usually needs to avoid the hazard of contamination. Principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) indicate that the acquiring-data from groundwater samples are explained 90.5 % of the variance in the data with a four-component system that explains a large portion of the total variance of collected data.