PROCRUSTES ROTATION AS A WAY TO COMPARE DIFFERENT SAMPLING SEASONS IN SOILS

Procrustes rotation is a powerful technique to compare subspaces. In this paper, Procrustes rotation is used to select the minimum number of original variables that are important to describe a system and to statistically compare different sampling seasons. In the latter case, Procrustes rotation methodology has been applied to determine similarities and differences between sampling seasons in urban soils. Four seasons (during one year) were carried out to develop a monitoring scheme to control metal pollution in a medium-city area. Future efforts to monitor metal pollution will be based on analyzing only two or (at most) three metals, i.e., Pb, Co, and Cd.