Assessment of Metals Concentrations in Soils of Abu Dhabi Emirate Using Pollution Indices and Multivariate Statistics.

Yousef Nazzal,Fares Howari,Ahmed A Al-Taani,Manish Sharma,Cristian Ștefan Dumitriu,Cijo M Xavier,Alina Bărbulescu,Jibran Iqbal

doi:10.3390/toxics9050095

Yousef Nazzal, Fares Howari + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics9050095

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Journal: Toxics	Publication Date: Apr 25, 2021
Citations: 31	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Zayed University, Transylvania University of Brașov

Abstract

The aim of this study was twofold. Firstly, we performed a land capability class determination of the agricultural soils from the Abu Dhabi Emirate, the United Arab Emirates, based on the concentrations of 17 chemical elements determined in the soil samples collected from 84 locations. Secondly, we assess the soil pollution with different metals, using several pollution indices. The results of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) shows that four principal components (PCs) are responsible for describing the total metals concentrations’ variance, the highest contribution on PC1 being that of Mn, and Cr, on PC2 that of Fe, on PC3 that of Cu, and on PC4 that of Al. After determining the optimal number of clusters, we classified the sites into three clusters, while the studied metals were grouped function on their concentrations. Then, we used five indices to assess the pollution level of the soil at the study sites and in the clusters. The geo—accumulation index (Igeo) indicates uncontamination/moderately contamination with Cu in cluster 1, uncontaminated/moderately contaminate soils with Cd, Cu, and Ni in cluster 2, and uncontaminated/moderately contaminated soil with Cu and moderately contaminated with Pb, Zn, and Ni in cluster 3. By comparison, the enrichment factors overestimate the pollution of the studied sites. The pollution load index (PLI) indicates a baseline level of pollution at 14 sites and the deterioration of the soil quality at four sites. The Nemerow pollution index provides similar results as PLI.

Highlights

Nowadays, anthropogenic activities lead to a biological and chemical imbalance in metals’ geochemical cycles, disturbance, and acceleration of metals’ natural geochemical process [1]
Even if some elements are naturally found in soil, their accumulation above a certain level may be toxic for the ecosystems and human health [3]
Literature survey reveals different multivariate GIS approaches for determining the heavy metal contamination in agricultural soil [8,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50] in many parts of the world, but only a few articles are focusing on the analysis of the metals concentrations in soils [38], sediments [51,52,53] and water [54,55,56,57], in the United Arab Emirates

Summary

Introduction

Anthropogenic activities lead to a biological and chemical imbalance in metals’ geochemical cycles, disturbance, and acceleration of metals’ natural geochemical process [1]. The application of multivariate statistical techniques on the metals’ accumulation helps drawing conclusions based on big original data sets [41,42] It provides a precise interpretation of the environmental circumstances and soil variables. Literature survey reveals different multivariate GIS approaches for determining the heavy metal contamination in agricultural soil [8,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50] in many parts of the world, but only a few articles are focusing on the analysis of the metals concentrations in soils [38], sediments [51,52,53] and water [54,55,56,57], in the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi Emirate’s land use includes urban, farming, rangeland, oil fields, cemeteries, commercial facilities, mangroves, quarries, and water reservoirs area [64] (Supplementary Material, Figure S3)

Sample Selection

Multivariate Analyses

Evaluating the Soil Pollution by Pollution Indices

Geochemical Setup

Multivariate Geostatistics