A background color scheme for piper plots to spatially visualize hydrochemical patterns

The combination of ternary diagrams of cations and anions with a central diamond graph make the Piper plot very useful in visualizing groundwater chemistry datasets. One of the major drawbacks is that it is hard to link spatial attributes of the dataset to the plot. In this study, we propose a background color scheme of the Piper plot so that spatial representations of these data can be colored according to their location in the Piper plot. The color scheme is chosen to have maximum resolution while still being perceptually uniform. The linking between Piper plot and maps through this color scheme allows the interpretation of the trends and processes deduced from the Piper plot in terms of the location in the aquifer, the geology, and the groundwater flow dynamics. The colored Piper plot is applied to a groundwater quality dataset of the Condamine Alluvium in Queensland, Australia.