Skip to main content
Log in

Geostatistically based management of arsenic contaminated ground water in shallow wells of Bangladesh

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Water Resources Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper investigates the effectiveness of geostatistical approaches, specifically ordinary kriging, for regional management of arsenic contaminated shallow ground water in Bangladesh. The arsenic database for reference comprised the nation-wide survey (of 3534 drinking wells) completed in 1999 by the British Geological Survey (BGS) in collaboration with the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) of Bangladesh. A Monte Carlo (MC) framework was devised for selection of randomly-sampled networks of wells from this reference database. Each randomly sampled network was assumed an equi-probable exploratory field campaign designed commensurably with the requirements of rapidity and cost-effectiveness in a rural setting. In general, the kriging method was found to underestimate the arsenic concentration at non-sampled locations. This underestimation exceeded the safe limits at the Holocene region of Southcentral Bangladesh. The probability of successful prediction of safe wells for this region was found to be 72% (WHO safe limit – 10 ppb) and 78% (Bangladesh safe limit – 50 ppb). For the Pleistocene Northwestern region of Bangladesh, the safe well prediction probability was in the ranges of 90%–97%. The relatively more contaminated Holocene region in Southcentral Bangladesh, on other hand, was found more amenable to accurate geostatistical prediction of unsafe wells. Findings from this study exemplify that, while mainstream geostatistical approaches (e.g., ordinary kriging) may not provide the most accurate prediction of mean arsenic concentration at non-sampled locations, they can delineate an approximate strategy for management of arsenic contaminated shallow ground water if applied carefully. The kriging methodology is applied to a test case in Bangladesh; the approach, however, is general and is expected to have application in rural settings for other developing countries where arsenic contamination of ground water is also widespread (e.g., parts of India, Vietnam, Taiwan and Mexico).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ahmed MF (2003) Arsenic contamination: Bangladesh perspective. ITN, BUET, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    Google Scholar 

  • Alam MK, Hassan A, Khan M, Whitney JW ( 1990) Geological map of Bangladesh. Geological Survey of Bangladesh

  • Bagtzoglou AC, Ababou R (1997) Conditional simulation and estimation of Gauss-Markov random fields using the Bayesian Nearest Neighbor Method. In: Soares A et al. (eds) Quantitative geology and geostatistics. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands, pp 477–491

    Google Scholar 

  • Berg M, Tran HC, Nguyen TC, Pham TV, Schertenleib R, Giger W (2001) Arsenic contamination of ground water and drinking water in Vietnam: A human health threat. Environ Sci Technol 35(13):2621–2626

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • BGS-DPHE ( 2001) Arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh. In: DG Kinnburgh, PL Smedley, (eds) vol 1–4. British Geological Survey Report WC/00/19, British Geological Survey, Keyworth, UK, available at: http://www.bgs.ac.uk/arsenic/Bangladesh

  • Biswas BK, Dhar RK, Samantha G, Mandal BK, Chakraborti D, Faruk I, Islam KS, Chowdury M, Islam A, Roy S (1998) Detailed study report of Samta, one of the arsenic-affected villages of Jessore District, Bangladesh. Curr Sci 74:134–145

    Google Scholar 

  • Burgess WG, Burren M, Perrin J, Ahmed KM (2000) Constraints on sustainable development of arsenic-bearing aquifers in southern Bangladesh. Part 1: A conceptual model of arsenic in the aquifer, in Sustainable Groundwater Development. Hiscock, Rivett, Davison (eds). Geological Soc Lond Spec Publ 193:145–163

    Google Scholar 

  • Chiles JP, Delfiner P (1999) Geostatistics: modeling spatial uncertainty. Wiley series in probability and statistics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Christakos G, Li X (1998) Bayesian maximum entropy analysis and mapping: a farewell to kriging estimators? Math Geology 30(4):435–462

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis JA, Yabusaki SB, Steefel CI, Zachara JM, Curtis GP, Redden GD, Criscenti LJ, Honeyman BD (2004) Assessing conceptual models for subsurface reactive transport of inorganic contaminants. EOS-Trans (AGU) 85(44):449–455

    Google Scholar 

  • Del Razo LM, Rellano MA, Cebrian ME (1990) The oxidation states arsenic in well-water from a chronic arsenicism area of Mexico. Environ Pollut 64:143–153

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deutsch C, Journel A (1998) GSLIB: Geostatistical software library and user's guide. Oxford University Press, UK, 340 pp

    Google Scholar 

  • Goovaerts P, AvRuskin G, Meliker J, Slotnick M, Jacquez G, Nriagu J (2005) Geostatistical modeling of the spatial variability of arsenic in groundwater of southeast Michigan. Water Resour Res 41(W07013) (doi: 10.1029/2004WR003705)

  • Harvey CF, Swartz CH, Badruzzaman ABM, Keon-Blute N, Yu W, Ali MA, Jay J, Beckie R, Niedan V, Brabander D, Oates PM, Ashfaque KN, Islam S, Hemond HF, Ahmed MF (2002) Arsenic mobility and groundwater extraction in Bangladesh. Science 298:1602–1606

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoque BA, Hoque MM, Ahmed T, Islam S, Azad AK, Ali N, Hossain M, Hossain MS (2004) Demand-based water options for arsenic mitigation: an experience from rural Bangladesh. Public Health 118:70–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hossain F, Bagtzoglou AC, Nahar N, Hossain MD (2006) Statistical characterization of arsenic contamination in shallow tube wells of western Bangladesh. Hydrological Process 20:1497–1510 (doi: 10.1002/hyp.5946)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hossain F, Sivakumar B (2006) Spatial pattern of arsenic contamination in shallow wells of Bangladesh: Regional geology and nonlinear dynamics. Stochastic Environ Res Risk Anal 20(1–2):66–76 (doi: 10.1007/s00477-0055-0012-7)

    Google Scholar 

  • Ma T-S, Sophocleous M, Yu Y-S (1999) Geostatistical applications in ground-water modeling in south-central Kansas. J Hydrologic Eng (ASCE) 4(1):57–64

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mazumder GDN, Haque R, Ghosh N, De BK, Santra A, Chakraborti D, Smith AH (1998) Arsenic levels in drinking water and the prevalence if skin lesions in West Bengal, India. Int J Epidemiol 27(5):871–877

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marchant BP, Lark RM (2005) Estimating variogram uncertainty. Math Geol 36(8):867–898

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massmann JA, Freeze RA (1989) Updating random hydraulic conductivity fields. Water Resour Res 25(7):1763

    Google Scholar 

  • McArthur JM, Ravenscroft P, Safiullah S, Thirlwall MF (2001) Arsenic in groundwater: testing pollution mechanisms for sedimentary aquifers in Bangladesh. Water Resour Res 37(1):109–117

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McArthur JM, Banerjee DM, Hudson-Edwards KA, Mishra R, Purohit R, Ravenscroft P, Cronine A, Howarth RJ, Chatterjee A, Talukder T, Lowry D, Houghton S, Chadha DK (2004) Natural organic matter in sedimentary basins and its relation to arsenic in anoxic ground water: the example of West Bengal and its worldwide implications. Appl Geochem 19:1255–1293

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McPhee J, William W-GY (2004) Multiobjective optimization for sustainable groundwater management in Semiarid regions. J Water Resour Plann Manage (ASCE) 130(6):490–497

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mukherjee AB, Bhattacharya P (2002) Arsenic in groundwater in the Bengal delta plain: Slow poisoning in Bangladesh. Environ Rev 9:189–220

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nickson RT, McArthur JM, Burgess W, Ahmed KM, Ravenscroft P, Rahman M (1998) Arsenic poisoning of Bangladesh groundwater. Nature 395:338

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rahman MM, Mukherjee D, Sengupta MN, Chowdury UK, Lodh D, Chanda CN, Roy S, Selim M, Quamruzzaman Q, Milton AH, Shadullahm SM, Rahman MT, Chakraborti D (2002) Effectiveness and reliability of arsenic field testing kits: Are the million dollar screening projects effective or not? Environ Sci Technol 36:5385–5394

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rizzo DM, Dougherty DE (1994) Characterization of aquifer properties using artificial neural networks: neural kriging. Water Resour Res 30(2):483–497

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Serre ML, Kolovos A, Christakos G, Modis K (2003) An application of the holistochastic human exposure methodology to naturally occurring arsenic in Bangladesh drinking water. Risk Anal 23(3):515–528

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shieh S-S, Chu J-Z, Jang S-S (2005) An interactive sampling strategy based on information analysis and ordinary kriging for locating hot spot regions. Math Geol 37(1):29–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith L, Freeze RA (1979) Stochastic analysis of steady state groundwater flow in a bounded domain, 2, Two-dimensional simulations. Water Resour Res 17(2):351–369

    Google Scholar 

  • Tseng T, Babazono A, Yamamoto E, Kurumatani N, Mino Y, Ogawa T, Kishi Y, Aoyama H (1968) Ingested arsenic and internal cancer in an endemic area of chronic arsenicism in Taiwan. J Natl Cancer Inst 40:453–463

    Google Scholar 

  • Yamamoto JK (2005) Correcting the smoothing effect of ordinary kriging estimates. Math Geol 37(1):67–94

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yu WH, Harvey CM, Harvey CF (2003) Arsenic groundwater in Bangladesh: a geostatistical and epidemiological framework for evaluating health effects and potential remedies. Water Resour Res 39(6):1146 (doi: 10.1029/2002WR001327)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Faisal Hossain.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Hossain, F., Hill, J. & Bagtzoglou, A.C. Geostatistically based management of arsenic contaminated ground water in shallow wells of Bangladesh. Water Resour Manage 21, 1245–1261 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-006-9079-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-006-9079-2

Keywords

Navigation