Abstract
Most of the monitoring points involved in the program for the measurment of water quality in coastal areas were arranged within several years after the setting of Environmental Water Quality Standards. The arrangement of these points were designed according to the qualitative guideline as to the water quality survey method released by Enviornmental Agency in 1971. Then the monitoring points should be verified whether the arrangement satifies the objectives of survey such as the compliance with Environmental Water Quality Standards and detection of trends when the sufficient data to analyze the arrangement are accumulated.
The arrangement method for coastal areas, however, have been scarcely reported. The water quality in coastal areas presents a variety and complexity of factors absent in rivers and lakes. These render monitoring points in coastal areas difficult to study.
This paper presents a statisitical method to aggregate the monitoring points in coastal areas. This method is characterized by selection of the parameters for analysis based on the calculation results of the partial lambda statisitics and use of the probability of misdiscrimination as a similarity index to aggregate points, which are obtained from the discriminate analysis. The proposed method was applied to Sagami Bay as a case study and reasonable results were obtained.
