Abstract

Though botanical gardens are an important and widely visited component of urban green spaces (UGS) worldwide, their pollution is rarely studied. The aim of this study was to assess botanical garden soil contamination and ecotoxicity and to evaluate whether urban botanical gardens are more contaminated than urban parks. Soil assessments showed serious contamination with Cd, Pb and Zn, emitted predominantly by traffic, agrochemicals and past construction and demolition waste. The discovery of hazardous historical ecological burden in the UGS calls for the necessity of detailed surveys of such areas. Despite prevailing moderate-to-heavy contamination, the soil was only slightly ecotoxic. Maximum immobilisation inhibition of Daphnia magna reached 15%. Growth of Sinapis alba L. was predominantly stimulated (73%), and Desmodesmus subspicatus Chodat was exclusively stimulated, possibly due to soil alkalinity and fertiliser-related nutrients. The hypothesis of a higher contamination of urban botanical gardens compared to urban parks was confirmed. However, urban parks can face a greater risk of soil ecotoxicity, hypothetically due to decreased activity of soil organisms resulting from adverse soil conditions caused by active recreation. The results highlight the need for an increased focus on botanical and ornamental gardens when assessing and managing UGS as areas potentially more burdened with contamination.

Highlights

  • Reduced soil quality poses a risk to human health and urban ecosystems [3,4,5,6]

  • Due to the very low background values, serious contamination is evident from the assessment using Igeo in some potentially toxic elements (PTEs)

  • Though the botanical garden soil assessments indicated serious contamination with Cd, Pb and Zn, all PTE contents were below the soil quality standards

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Summary

Introduction

Urban soil pollution by anthropogenic activities is an important research topic [1,2]. Reduced soil quality poses a risk to human health and urban ecosystems [3,4,5,6]. Soil in industrial areas or near roads contains the highest pollution levels due to the continuous emission of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) [7,8]. Traffic [9,10] and coal combustion [4,10] emit high concentrations of PTEs and represent the most important sources of pollution in cities.

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