A Methodology for Water Quality Assessment in Developing Regions: A Case Study of China's Yellow River

Due to limited data and scarce financial resources in developing regions, policy decisions for managing water resources must often be made without a full understanding of what potential impacts on water quality may result. This study demonstrates a methodology for utilizing georeferenced statistical data to assess the primary pollution contributions and to model the physical impacts resulting from these contributions. Using socio-economic data on population, agricultural production and industrial output provides a basis for evaluating the potential effects on the current water quality situation and allows a method to assess the influences resulting from changes of these socio-economic patterns. This study focused on evaluating the current conditions in the Yellow River in China. A conceptual model is developed to estimate Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) generation and link these sources with the hydrologic characteristics of the landscape to generate BOD loadings into the main river channel. In-stream fate and transport modeling is then used to estimate the BOD and dissolved oxygen throughout the river