Approach to Evaluate the Data of Moss Biomonitoring Studies: Preprocessing and Preliminary Ranking

Abstract

This paper, dedicated to Acad. Florin Gheorghe Filip, at his 15th anniversary as the Chairman of the Information Science and Technology Section of the Romanian Academy, suggests an approach to describe the data obtained in biomonitoring studies using mosses, on the example of the Republic of Moldova. In total, 33 moss samples were collected on the territory of Moldova, the elemental composition of which was determined by neutron activation analysis and atomic absorption spectrometry. At the first stage of the work, a correlation analysis was carried out with the ranking of data in the order of decreasing total correlation, which made it possible to preliminarily reduce the number of elements to two factors. At the stage of data sorting, iron, the content of which in the environment can be associated with anthropogenic activity, was chosen as the element determining the rank. The next stage of work was data smoothing using a discrete cosine transform, for which the codes were rewritten and the algorithm was ported to the Excel-VBA environment, which is most suitable for preprocessing and graphical display of experimental data. Also, an algorithm was developed for determining the number of linearly independent (basis) vectors in which the matrix itself can be decomposed. Two principal roots were identified, of which the larger one is several thousand units, and three lower roots, which are less than unit were excluded, since their absolute values differ by two to three or more orders of magnitude downward from the eigenvalues of the influencing components. The paper is dedicated to Acad. Florin Gheorghe Filip, at his 15th anniversary as the Chairman of the Information Science and Technology Section of the Romanian Academy, and at his 75th anniversary.