Department of Biology, Kyung Hee University, Dongdaemun, Seoul 130-701, Korea.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2012 Apr;9(4):1182-200. doi: 10.3390/ijerph9041182. Epub 2012 Apr 11.
One of the major issues related to the environment in the 21st century is sustainable development. The innovative economic growth policy has supported relatively successful economic development, but poor environmental conservation efforts, have consequently resulted in serious water quality pollution issues. Hence, assessments of water quality and health are fundamental processes towards conserving and restoring aquatic ecosystems. In this study, we characterized spatial and temporal changes in water quality (specifically physico-chemical variables plus priority and non-priority pollutants) of discharges from industrial complexes on a national scale in Korea. The data were provided by the Water Quality Monitoring Program operated by the Ministry of Environment, Korea and were measured from 1989 to 2008 on a monthly basis at 61 effluent monitoring sites located at industrial complexes. Analysis of monthly and annual changes in water quality, using the seasonal Mann-Kendall test, indicated an improvement in water quality, which was inferred from a continuous increase in dissolved oxygen and decrease in other water quality factors. A Self-Organizing Map, which is an unsupervised artificial neural network, also indicated an improvement of effluent water quality, by showing spatial and temporal differences in the effluent water quality as well as in the occurrence of priority pollutants. Finally, our results suggested that continued long-term monitoring is necessary to establish plans and policies for wastewater management and health assessment.
二十一世纪与环境相关的主要问题之一是可持续发展。创新的经济增长政策支持了相对成功的经济发展，但环境保护力度不足，导致了严重的水质污染问题。因此，水质和健康评估是保护和恢复水生生态系统的基本过程。在这项研究中，我们描述了韩国全国范围内工业综合体排放物的水质（具体为理化变量以及优先和非优先污染物）的时空变化。这些数据是由韩国环境部运营的水质监测计划提供的，从 1989 年到 2008 年，每月在 61 个位于工业综合体的废水监测点进行测量。使用季节性曼恩-肯德尔检验分析水质的月度和年度变化表明，水质有所改善，这可以从溶解氧的持续增加和其他水质因素的减少推断出来。自组织图（一种无监督的人工神经网络）也表明了废水水质的改善，它显示了废水水质以及优先污染物的时空差异。最后，我们的结果表明，需要进行持续的长期监测，以制定废水管理和健康评估的计划和政策。
