The Influence of Agricultural Activities on the Water Quality of the River Sosiani in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya
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- Year:
- 2015
- Type of Publication:
- Article
- Keywords:
- Agriculture, River Sosiani, Spatial-Temporal, Water Samples and Water Quality
- Authors:
- Ontumbi, George; Obando, Joy; Ondieki, Christopher
- Journal:
- IJRAS
- Volume:
- 2
- Number:
- 1
- Pages:
- 34-40
- Month:
- Jan.-Feb.
- ISSN:
- 2348-3997
- Note:
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
- Abstract:
- The study assessed the influence of agricultural activities on the water quality of the River Sosiani in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya. This was carried out by identifying the agricultural activities within the River Sosiani catchment area and analyzing the spatial-temporal variation of physical-chemical variables of water quality along selected points in River Sosiani. The study adopted experimental research design where samples of river water were taken based on spatial-temporal variations for laboratory testing. The water samples were collected for two seasons, one dry and wet, from four selected sites identified by Landsat images reflecting agricultural activities in the vicinity and upstream. The samples were subjected to standard procedures for Total suspended solids, Turbidity, Electrical conductivity, temperature, pH, Nitrates and total phosphorous. The results showed that there were no significance difference in mean temperatures upstream and downstream (ANOVA; d.f =3, f =0.127 and p = 0.943) while the values of water pH ranged between 6.9 and 7.8 and electrical conductivity ranged between 36μS/CM and 142μS/CM. The study established that River Sosiani was stressed by nutrients originating from agricultural activities and therefore combined efforts of the County government and stakeholders were necessary to check further water degradation.
Full text: 
IJRAS-194_final.pdf [Bibtex]
IJRAS-194_final.pdf [Bibtex]