Abstract
Water quality monitoring has one of the highest priorities in environmental protection policy. The main objectives are to control and minimise the incidence of pollutant-oriented problems, and to provide water of appropriate quality to serve various purposes such as drinking water supply, irrigation water, etc. Factor analysis attempts to explain the correlations between the observations in terms of the underlying factors, which are not directly observable. In the present study, factor analysis is applied to physico-chemical parameters of Smolnik creek, Slovakia, with the aim classification and data summation as well as segmentation of large heterogeneous data sets into smaller homogeneous subsets that can be easily managed, separately modelled and analysed.
The paper deals with evaluation of the surface water and sediment quality relate to acid mine drainage (AMD) producing from abandoned sulphide mine in Smolnik (Slovak Republic) by factor analysis. This study underscores the value of multivariate statistical analysis for evaluation and interpretation of the data with a view to stimulating better policy outcomes and decision-making that positively impacts water quality and thus prospectively diminishes the pollution caused by hazardous toxic elements in mining environments.
