Mill River Discharge v. Water Quality Correlation

Goal:

• Determine correlation between (1) and (2) below:

  1. water quality data collected by Connecticut River Conservancy from site Mill River, Northampton at Rope Swing off Smith College Path at coordinates (-72.650227, 42.317161)

  2. discharge data from USGS site '0117500 Mill River at Northampton, MA,' located 1.4 mi upstream from monitor site near the Clement Street Bridge.

Method:

• First tested for Pearson R correlations between discharge data for:
  • Day of measurement
  • " " + 1 day prior
  • " " + 2 days prior
  • " " + 3 days prior
• Then tested for Spearman R correlations between discharge data and quality rankings:
  1. 'Blue Clean for Boating and Swimming'
  2. 'Yellow Clean for Boating'
  3. 'Red Not Clean for Boating or Swimming'

Results:

Pearson R Correlation Results:

	3days	2days	1days	0days
pearson_corrs	0.116268	0.153425	0.275235	0.27112
p-vals	0.12767	0.0438721	0.000247389	0.000308573

Spearman R Correlation Results:

	3days	2days	1days	0days
spearman_corrs	0.113745	0.156522	0.207701	0.223033
p-vals	0.136205	0.0397344	0.00610577	0.00318268