Abstract
Soil contamination by heavy metals is often caused by industrial and agricultural activities, which directly affects environment quality and food safety, especially for farmlands. To develop indicators for making proper decisions regarding land use, the Soil Heavy Metal Contamination Evaluation System including the Single Pollution Index (Pi), the Nemerow Pollution Index (PINemerow), the Potential Ecological Risk Index (RI), and the Contamination Severity Index (CSI) was developed using data from 499 samples collected from an area of 2017 km2. A risk assessment zoning solution based on PPRC (the Soil Heavy Metal Contamination Evaluation System including Pi, PINemerow, RI and CSI) was proposed, and the study area was mapped for four risk assessment zones as follows: no risk zone, very low risk zone, low risk zone, and intermediate risk zone. Four land use strategies (priority protection, protection, comprehensive monitoring, and warning and control) were proposed. Generally, the risk assessment zoning solution based on PPRC-defined minimizes the potential ecological risk to the land for the scientific evaluation of heavy metal pollution in areas of intensive agricultural activity.
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