Abstract
To quantitatively estimate the effect of yellow sand(loess) fromt he Northern China, various soil sources having similar chemical compositions to yellow sands should be separated and identified. After that, mass contribution for yellow sand can be calculated. The study showed that it was impossible to solve this problem by the traditional bulk analyses. However, particle-by-particle analysis by a CCSEM (computer controlled scanning electron microscope) gave enormous potentials to solve it. To perform this study, seven soil source data analyzed by CCSEM were obtained from Texas, U.S.A. Initially, each soil date was classified into two groups, coarse and fine particle groups since the particle number distribution showed a minimum occurring at 5.2$\mu$m of aerodynamic diameter. Particles in each group were then classified into one of the 283 homogeneous particle classes by the universal classification rule which had been built by an expert system in the early study. Further, mass fractions and their uncertainties for each class in each source were calculated by the Jackknife method, and then source profile matrix for the 7 soil sources was created. To use the profile matrix in the study of source contribution, it is necessary to test the degree of collinearity among sources. The profiles were tested by the singular value decomposition method. As a result, each soil source characterized by artificially created variables was totally independent each other and is ready to use in source contribution studies as a receptor model.
