Comparison of different multiway methods for the analysis of geographical metal distributions in fish, sediments and river waters in Catalonia

Comparison of different multiway data analysis methods based on Principal Component Analysis and Multivariate Curve Resolution Matrix Augmentation bilinear models and on PARAFAC and TUCKER3 models is performed in the analysis of a three-way data set built up by the analysis of 11 metal ions in 17 fish, sediment and water samples from the same river site locations of Catalonia (NE, Spain). Adaptation of Multivariate Curve Resolution to PARAFAC and TUCKER3 type of models showed the flexibility of this method to handle different data structures and also to fulfill different constraint types. Although the way the results were obtained using these different chemometric methods varied, similar environmental interpretations and conclusions were derived independently of the chemometric method used for data analysis.