Environmental Characteristics of Groundwater: an Application of PCA to Water Chemistry Analysis in Yulin

For our investigation into the water quality in Yulin city, we collected 76 typical water samples to be tested for particle quality. By applying a Romani type classification method the groundwater of Yulin city was classified into nine categories by type, i.e., Ca-HCO3, Na-HCO3, Na-HCO3-SO4-Cl, Na-HCO3-SO4, Na-Cl, Na-Cl-HCO3, Na-Ca-HCO3, Ca-Cl-HCO3 and Ca-HCO3-SO4-Cl. A principal component analysis was carried out in order to analyze the groundwater environment. From this analysis we considered that the information collected could be represented by 21 indices from which we extracted seven principal components, which, respectively, accounted for 37.4%, 13.0%, 8.1%, 7.2%, 6.3%, 5.9% and 4.6% of the total variation. The results show that the groundwater environment of this region is largely determined by characteristic components of the natural groundwater background. One part of the water was polluted by leaching/eluviation of solid waste generated from coal mining. Another part of the ground water was contaminated by acid mine water from the coal layer and from improper irrigation. In addition, geological and hydrogeological conditions also cause changes in the water environment.