Some Geophysicist asked: There is a relation between Electrical Resistivity and Water Quality
(((Water Quality is different from Water Salinity)
My Answer
The electrical resistivity has no relation with water quality but off course has an inverse relation with salinity
Let me inform you that the electrical conductivity or, conversely, the resistivity of water, gives a good indication of the overall mineralization and, at the same time, of the purity of this water.
To stay in good health and support our body with cleansing and detoxifying water, it must be pure and ideally have a conductivity of 160 µS / cm at most and resistivity of 6,000 Ω at least.
Agree with Dr. Anchour. There is a variety of uses I made for a specific conductivity meter. It’s not specific what exactly is dissolved, but it can be useful in dividing say rainwater runoff with low conductivity from groundwater that contains high dissolved minerals. Years back, when we were aerially spraying herbicides, I added small amounts of salt to stream to help quantify with conductivity meter time of travel so we could sample timely. I would have used fluorescent dye, but we were using that in the spray mix that would show up on fluorometer, but not visually. Some geologic types produce high hardness, high conductivity water, such as karst terrain. But it’s a useful indicator.
electrical conductivity is a measure of how well water conducts a current, thats dependant on the type and number of ions in water arising from different soluble chemicals. Elec resistivity could be the opposite of conductivity, and thereby also be associated with water quality.
I agree with the previous answers and will add another point. Conductivity (units uS) of water is used as measure of all the inorganic anions and cations and related to the common water quality parameter Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) (units mg/L) which has historically been used as a gravimetric analysis of the mineral content of water. Conductivity does not directly correlate to TDS as different ions have different conductivites. Nonetheless, a conductivity meter will use a generic equation to convert conductivity to TDS.
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