Evaluation of Patterns and Spatial Trends of Pesticide Residues from Vikuge Farm, Coast Region, Tanzania by Principal Components Analysis

Abstract

This paper reports on the analysis of organochlorine pesticides pollution data obtained from samples collected from Vikuge farm, Coast Region, Tanzania between 2000 and 2003 by principal component analysis (PCA). PCA of the data sets for pesticide residues in water, soil and sediments samples from Vikuge has shown that the obsolete pesticides dumped at Vikuge pasture farm for a number of years undergo degradation with time and the distribution pattern of the pesticides in the three environments is similar. Strong outliers were also identified in the data by the use of PCA score plots. Further analysis of the data by the use of line plots has shown a decreasing trend of the concentrations of the pesticide residues with increasing distance from the point source (the place where obsolete pesticides were dumped). However, the data from sediment samples obtained from Vikuge farm has shown an increase of the residues concentrations with increasing distance from the nearest point to the area where the pesticides were dumped.

Keywords; Chemometrics; Principal Components Analysis; Pesticides