APPLICATION OF TRACE-ELEMENTS DETERMINATION AND MULTIVARIATE-STATISTICS TO A POLLUTION STUDY OF LAKE PAMVOTIS, NW GREECE

Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) and Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS) were employed for the determination of total and 0. 5 N HCl extractable trace elements in surface sediments from Lake Pamv otis. The application of cluster analysis to a) total concentrations, b) 0.5N HCl extractable concentrations and c) to groups of selected tr ace elements resulted in the separation of the sediment samples in che mical groups which were sufficient to distinguish among different trac e element sources, trace the extent of the anthropogenic or geological perturbation and define the areas of the pollution background. The co mbination of chemical and statistical analysis was found to be a usefu l tool for pollution studies especially when the volume of the availab le data makes their interpretation difficult.