Sparse PCA and investigation of multi-elements compositional repositories: theory and applications

The geochemistry of floodplain sediments is fundamental to monitor
environmental changes and to quantify their contribution to natural and anthropic
processes. A floodplain sediment composition is a vector of positive elements which
sum to a fixed constant. The analysis of high-dimensional compositions requires methods
that produce results involving only a small portion of the original variables. On
the other hand, the analysis must take into account the additional constraints specific
to compositions. With the purpose of studying these problems, a new procedure for
sparse PCA is proposed on European floodplain sediment samples.