Multivariate Analysis for Assessing Irrigation Water Quality: A Case Study of the Bahr Mouise Canal, Eastern Nile Delta

Water scarcity and suitable irrigation water management in arid regions represent tangible challenges for sustainable agriculture. The current study aimed to apply multivariate analysis and to develop a simplified water quality assessment using principal component analysis (PCA) and the agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC) technique to assess the water quality of the Bahr Mouise canal in El-Sharkia Governorate, Egypt. The proposed methods depended on the monitored water chemical composition (e.g., pH, water electrical conductivity (ECiw), Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+, K+, HCO3−, Cl−, and SO42−) during 2019. Based on the supervised classification of satellite images (Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI)), the distinguished land use/land cover types around the Bahr Mouise canal were agriculture, urban, and water bodies, while the dominating land use was agriculture. The water quality of the Bahr Mouise canal was classified into two classes based on the application of the irrigation water quality index (IWQI), while the water quality was classified into three classes using the PCA and AHC methods. Temporal variations in water quality were investigated, where the water qualities in winter, autumn, and spring (January, February, March, April, November, and December) were classified as class I (no restrictions) based on IWQI application, and the water salinity, sodicity, and/or alkalinity did not represent limiting factors for irrigation water quality. On the other hand, in the summer season (May, June, July, August, and October), the irrigation water was classified as class II (low restrictions); therefore, irrigation processes during summer may lead to an increase in the alkalinity hazard. The PCA classifications were compared with the IWQI results; the PCA classifications had similar assessment results during the year, except in September, while the water quality was assigned to class II using the PCA method and class I by applying the IWQI. Furthermore, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) around the Bahr Mouise canal over eight months and climatic data assisted in explaining the fluctuations in water quality during 2019 as a result of changing the crop season and agriculture management. Assessments of water quality help to conserve soil, reduce degradation risk, and support decision makers in order to obtain sustainable agriculture, especially under water irrigation scarcity and the limited agricultural land in such an arid region.