Mapping global hotspots and trends of water quality (1992–2010): a data driven approach

Sébastien Desbureaux, Frederic Mortier, Esha Zaveri, Michelle van Vliet, Jason Russ, Aude Rodella and Richard Damania
Additional contact information
Frederic Mortier: UPR Forêts et Sociétés - Forêts et Sociétés - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, Cirad-ES - Département Environnements et Sociétés - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement
Esha Zaveri: World Bank Group
Michelle van Vliet: Universiteit Utrecht / Utrecht University [Utrecht]
Jason Russ: World Bank Group
Aude Rodella: World Bank Group
Richard Damania: World Bank Group

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Clean water is key for sustainable development. However, large gaps in monitoring data limit our understanding of global hotspots of poor water quality and their evolution over time. We demonstrate the value added of a data-driven approach (here, random forest) to provide accurate high-frequency estimates of surface water quality worldwide over the period 1992-2010. We assess water quality for six indicators (temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, salinity, nitrate-nitrite, phosphorus) relevant for the sustainable development goals. The performance of our modeling approach compares well to, or exceeds, the performance of recently published process-based models. The model's outputs indicate that poor water quality is a global problem that impacts low-, middle-and high-income countries but with different pollutants. When countries become richer, water pollution does not disappear but evolves. Water quality exhibited a signif icant change between 1992 and 2010 with a higher percentage of grid cells where water quality shows a statistically significant deterioration (30%) compared to where water quality improved (22%).

Keywords: water quality; sustainable development goals; random forest; data-driven modelling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-11-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-03855421v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Environmental Research Letters, 2022, 17 (11), pp.114048. ⟨10.1088/1748-9326/ac9cf6⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-03855421v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Mapping global hotspots and trends of water quality (1992-2010): a data driven approach (2022)
Working Paper: Mapping global hotspots and trends of water quality (1992-2010): a data driven approach (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03855421

DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac9cf6

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().