Abstract
Trace elements pollution has attracted a lot of attention worldwide. However, it is difficult to identify and apportion the sources of multiple element pollutants over large areas because of the considerable spatial complexity and variability in the distribution of trace elements in soil. In this study, we collected total of 2051 topsoil (0–20 cm) samples, and analyzed the general pollution status of soils from the Yangtze River Delta, Southeast China. We applied principal component analysis (PCA), a finite mixture distribution model (FMDM), and geostatistical tools to identify and quantitatively apportion the sources of seven kinds of trace elements (chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni), and arsenic (As)) in soil. The PCA results indicated that the trace elements in soil in the study area were mainly from natural, multi-pollutant and industrial sources. The FMDM also fitted three sub log-normal distributions. The results from the two models were quite similar: Cr, As, and Ni were mainly from natural sources caused by parent material weathering; Cd, Cu, and Zu were mainly from mixed sources, with a considerable portion from anthropogenic activities such as traffic pollutants, domestic garbage, and agricultural inputs, and Hg was mainly from industrial wastes and pollutants.
Highlights
Trace elements pollution has attracted a lot of attention around the world [1,2,3,4,5]
Apart from Cr, the average values of the trace elements were higher than the background values; the averages of Hg, Cd, Zn, and Cu were much higher than the background values which suggest that these trace elements may have been affected by human activities [26]
The modelled mean of natural distribution was below the soil background value, and the modelled model (Figure 7a,d,g), and should fall within the natural and anthropogenic distributions in theory
Summary
Trace elements pollution has attracted a lot of attention around the world [1,2,3,4,5]. There is much concern about trace elements-contaminated soils because of their high toxicity and resistance to degradation [6]. The sources of soil trace elements are generally natural or anthropogenic [10,11]. The geographical distribution of trace elements in soil is complex [7]. Industrial pollution is a major source of trace element pollution in the soil [44,45,46]. We quantitatively identified the sources of seven trace elements in the Yangtze River. J.L.; Shi, Z.; Li, Y.; Yang, D.Z.; Li, H.Y.; Zhu, Y.W. Assessing environmental quality of agricultural soils using GIS and multivariate analysis in Zhejiang province, China.
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