The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection collected watershed data over 15 years through the Strategic Monitoring and Assessment of River basin Teams program. First, I automated the use of box-and-whisker plots to analyze the distribution of concentrations across different stations. Then, I computed load duration curves across four key stations for six analytes. Out of those, Total Phosphorous showed problems in one station, Total Nitrogen in three, and Bacteria across all four (small data sets). I also ran Mann-Kendall trend analysis to interpret water quality improvements over time across 11 key stations. Total Phosphorous loads were decreasing across all stations and Total Nitrogen loads were decreasing at 3 stations at 5% statistical significance.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Hoque, Muyeedul

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• E-project-041514-142901

Advisor

• Strong, Diane M.

Year

• 2014

Sponsor

• Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection

Date created

• 2014-04-15

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Management Information Systems

Rights statement

• In Copyright