“…The observed relationships from the PCA analysis suggest that there exists an intricate connection among the various soil parameters across the entire state which can be difficult to observe physically. PCA has been used extensively by numerous researchers to: (i) study the factors that control the chemical properties of organic soil solutions [38], (ii) investigate how the chemical properties of slightly to moderate saline calcareous soil solutions change with time [32], (iii) assess how the parent material affects the chemical properties of soil solutions derived from calcareous and siliceous rocks [40], and (iv) evaluate how soil solids affect the chemical properties of soil leachates [12]. However, PCA has the limitation that the results obtained from this analysis are unable to explain the local spatial variations [21].…”