Hydro-Geochemical Assessment of Groundwater Quality Of Muda River Basin, Kedah Malaysia

The continuous development in the urbanisation, industrial, and agricultural sectors, coupled with an increase in the population of a given area, impacts the quality and supply of surface water. Groundwater serve as a viable alternative to mitigate these challenges. However, ensuring the safety and sustainability of groundwater necessitates comprehensive quality monitoring. This study employs statistical techniques and conventional plotting methods to evaluate the groundwater quality, physical properties, and chemical composition derived from 55 monitoring wells across the Muda River Basin Laboratory analyses reveal that the groundwater in the Muda River Basin exhibits alkaline characteristics, with electrical conductivity values ranging from 0 to 1050 µS/cm. The hydrogeochemical profile is primarily influenced by silicate and carbonate weathering processes, driven by the region's consistently humid and hot climatic conditions. Principal Component Analysis (PCA), accounting for 80.4% of the dataset's variance, identifies ion exchange, soil mineralization, silicate weathering, and carbonate dissolution as the dominant processes shaping groundwater chemistry. The study also determines the major ionic composition of groundwater in the following order: HCO₃⁻ > Ca²⁺ > Na⁺ > Cl⁻ > SO₄²⁻ > Mg²⁺ > NO₃⁻ > K⁺. The concentrations of these ions conform to the World Health Organization (WHO) standards for drinking water quality. The findings demonstrate that integrating multivariate statistical methods, conventional hydrochemical plots, and geochemical modeling is instrumental in elucidating the factors governing groundwater quality.