| The aim of this work was to identify and to investigate the determining factors of water table quality in the Irrigated Perimeter of Baixo Acaraú, Ceará, Brazil, using factor analysis/principal component analysis (FA/PCA). It was sampled nine shallow wells spread out on two different types of land: uncultivated area (A1) and irrigated area (A2). Groundwater was sampled monthly from Dec/2003 to Nov/2005, Nov/2006, Mar and April/2007. We measured the following parameters: pH, electrical conductivity (EC), and concentrations of Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+, K+, Cl-, PO4-, NH4-, NO3-, SO4-2, HCO3- and CO3- 2. The PCA resulted in a model composed of three components that explained 93.06% and 83.72% of the total variance of the data set from A1 and A2, respectively. It was... |
