Statistical analysis
The CONISS cluster analysis allows the zoning of the different units of
palynofacies in the different samples of the Gomati River flood plain.
However, to ascertain the extent of the role of grain size in
palynofacies, coordination statistics Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
was performed on grain size and palynofacies. The PCA technique is
widely used by ecologists and environmentalists to convert large data
sets into condensed principal components of representative forms in
two-dimensional presentation (Legendre and Legendre, 1998).
The statistical Response data in the present study are compositional and
have a gradient of 1.0 standard deviation. According to the CANOCO
Advisor linear method (PCA) is recommended (Legendre and Legendre,
1998). In the present study, based on the PCA technique, it can be
ascertained that the relation between palynofacies and grain size
accounted for 84.62% of the four principal components, however, the two
principal components PC1 and PC2 accounted for 62% of the total
variance. The Pseudo-canonical correlation corresponds to
~81.48% for PC1 and PC2. The study shows that PC1 is
mainly correlated with medium silt and fine sand (left to the right side
of Fig. 6) where the degraded brown OM, structured OM, oxidized land
plant remains and cyanobacteria tend to have dominance or enhanced
percentage, and with coarse sand (in opposite direction) where only
Black oxidized OM follow the direction of probability. In PC1 the fine
silt and medium silt are relatively short and have less impact on the
distribution of the palynofacies. Similarly, for PC2 it can be observed
that Pollen/spore, Amorphous OM, and filamentous algae go in the same
direction as very fine sand. This explains how the palynofacies are in
synchronization with very fine sand in increasing probability as also
observed by the association of palynofacies and grain size (Tyson,
1993). Similar to clay sediments, the fungal remains, animal remains,
and scolecodonts go in hand-to-hand. A negative correlation among the
different palynofacies can be observed such as animal remains with
pollen/spore, filamentous algae, and Thecamoebians. The black oxidized
OM also shows a negative correlation with degraded brown OM, structured
OM, and oxidized land plants.