Assessment of Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Jebba Upper Basin on River Niger, North Central Nigeria

Abstract

Jebba Upper Basin upstream at Kainji, was constructed on River Niger in Nigeria during the last five decades mainly for hydropower generation, but receives pollutants through anthropogenic activities. This study assesses physical and chemical characteristics of Jebba upper basin on River Niger, North Central Nigeria using appropriate standard methods. The results show that the mean values of the physical and chemical parameters of water were: temperature (27.89±1.84 °C), pH (7.17±0.22), dissolved oxygen (6.35±0.91 mg/L), total hardness (42.33±32.89 mg/L), biological oxygen demand (2.85±1.07 mg/L), and conductivity (51.13±29.09 µs/cm). The result shows that temperature has significant positive (either at r < 0.05 and r < 0.01) association with Total Hardness (TH) (0.47), BOD (0.30) and NO₃^- (0.43) though inversely correlated with transparency (-0.29, r >0.05). Total Hardness also have a positive correlation (0.52, r >0.05) with nitrate. Spatial-temporal variations influenced by environmental factors were observed to impacted water quality parameters in the study area.