Tracing of dissolved organic matter from the Sepetiba Bay (Brazil) by PARAFAC analysis of total luminescence matrices.

Fluorescent excitation-emission matrices (FEEM) of the fluorescent dissolved organic matter (FDOM) are widely used for DOM characterization and tracing. In this work, a set of FEEM from sampling campaigns in the Sepetiba Bay (Brazil) was decomposed into independent components using the parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) algorithm. Four independent components were extracted describing the total fluorescence of the FDOM. The well described peaks A, C, M, B and T were found, and a new peak, A', linked to the C peak, was detected. Relative contribution of each of four components to the total fluorescence confirms that the coastal water has DOM of terrestrial origin, except for the 275Ex/400-500Em range (nm), which primarily occurs in marine waters.