Evaluation of regional groundwater quality using PCA and geostatistics in the urban coastal aquifer, East Coast of India

Abstract

A systematic groundwater quality-monitoring program was conducted, and a total of 201 groundwater samples were collected. Multivariate and geostatistical techniques were employed to investigate major contamination types and its spatial characteristics in the study area. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) reveals that salinity (Factor 1) and nutrient (Factor 2) are very predominant contaminants in the shallow coastal aquifer. The factor (F1 and F2) scores of each well during three seasons were indicated a spatial correlation of salinity factor (F1) up to 10 km and no spatial correlation were found for nutrient factor (F2).