Temporal variation of salinity in marine water using statistical approaches

Abstract

Administration and biodiversity discussion of marine conditions has turned out to be vital worry to every nation around the globe. The nearness of ports, power plants and different exercises in beach front zones will affects physical and synthetic water parameters. Six monitoring stations in the Straits of Johor in the southern part of Peninsular Malaysia are considered in the study. This study attempts to determine trends of salinity from 2004 until 2014 using time series regression model and to identify the marine parameters which are temperature, dissolved oxygen and conductivity that have significant linear relationship with the salinity of surface water using Pearson correlation. Slope of the fitted regression model, B1 shows significant positive increasing trend on salinity throughout the year with the highest value of 0.018 at B2 and B3 stations. Pearson correlation indicates strong positive linear relationship between salinity and conductivity for each station with r between .75 to .83. There is correlation between salinity and dissolved oxygen and conductivity at station B1, B2, B3 and A3. On the other hand, only conductivity affects salinity level at A2, while temperature and conductivity affect salinity level at A1 station. The physical parameters along Straits of Johor should be continuously monitored in order to maintain the ecosystem and to ensure the activities along the straits does not affect much towards the biodiversity along the area.