Multiregression analysis of the kinetic constants in ephemeralrivers: the case study of the Oreto river

Profuse efforts have been committed to develop efficient tools to measure theecological status of the receiving water body quality state. The recurrence to mathematicalmodels as support tools for the receiving water body quality assessment can be an optimalchoice. Indeed, mathematical models can allow to build-up the cause effect relationshipbetween polluting sources and receiving water quality. Regarding the river water qualitymodelling, two different kinds of river can be single out: large and small rivers. In themodelling approach, the main differences between the two types of rivers are reflected inthe model kinetic constants. Indeed, the main quality processes which control and governthe quality state play a differ rule. As a results, the application of model approaches as wellas kinetic constants derived for large river, can lead to wide biases thus misevaluating theriver quality state. The paper presents a study where a multiregression analysis wascarried out for assessing relationships to be employed for the evaluation of the kineticsconstants for small rivers. To accomplish such a goal, the kinetic constants derived by aprevious application of a river water quality model applied to a real case study were used.Such kinetics constants were employed for deriving new multiregression equations for theassessment of the kinetics constants for small rivers.