Abstract
Characterization of spatial variation of heavy metals in urban soils is essential to identify pollution sources and potential risks to humans and the environment. While heavy metals concentration in soils depends also on the nature of bedrock and on abiotic and biotic factors, it can be argued that nowadays, due to increasing human activities, it is determined mainly by anthropogenic sources. We determined concentrations and spatial distribution of heavy metals, with particular focus on those potentially toxic (As, Cr, Pb, V, and Zn), in urban and peri-urban soils of Cosenza-Rende (southern Italy). One hundred forty-nine samples of topsoil (0–10 cm) were collected and analyzed for 36 elements by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). In addition, 18 samples of rocks were collected on outcrops of whole area and analyzed by ICP-ES and ICP-MS. Geostatistical methods were used to map the concentrations of major oxides and several minor elements. Heavy metals in the analyzed samples showed a wide range of concentrations, primarily controlled by the geochemical composition of bedrock, with the notable exceptions of Cu, Pb, and Zn, whose concentrations are heavily affected by land use and anthropogenic pollution in urban areas. Geochemical analysis and spatial distribution showed that high concentrations of potentially toxic elements are found in soils near major roads, indicating that anthropogenic factors determine the anomalies in these areas.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Amodio Morelli, L., Bonardi, G., Colonna, V., Dietrich, D., Giunta, G., Ippolito, F., et al. (1976). L’arco calabro-peloritano nell’orogene appenninico-maghrebide. Memorie della Società Geologica Italiana, 17, 1–60.
Burgos, P., Madejón, E., Pérez-de-Mora, A., & Cabrera, F. (2006). Spatial variability of the chemical characteristics of a trace-element-contaminated soil before and after remediation. Geoderma, 130, 157–175.
Buttafuoco, G., Tallarico, A., & Falcone, G. (2007). Mapping soil gas radon concentration: a comparative study of geostatistical methods. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 131, 135–151.
Cicchella, D., De Vivo, B., & Lima, A. (2005). Background and baseline concentration values of elements harmful to human health in the volcanic soils of the metropolitan and provincial areas of Napoli (Italy). Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis, 5, 29–40.
Cicchella, D., De Vivo, B., Lima, A., Albanese, S., Mc Gill, R. A. R., & Parrish, R. R. (2008a). Heavy metal pollution and Pb isotopes in urban soils of Napoli, Italy. Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis, 8, 103–112.
Cicchella, D., De Vivo, B., Lima, A., Albanese, S., & Fedele, L. (2008b). Urban geochemical mapping in the Campania region (Italy). Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis, 8, 19–29.
Cicchella, D., Fedele, L., De Vivo, B., Albanese, S., & Lima, A. (2008c). Platinum group element distribution in the soils from urban areas of Campania Region (Italy). Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis, 8, 31–40.
Critelli, S., Gullà, G., Matano, F. (1990). L’alterazione delle rocce cristalline e sua incidenza sulla franosità in Calabria. In Antronico L., Critelli S., Gabriele S., Versace P. (Eds), Indagine a scala regionale sul dissesto idrogeologico in Calabria provocato dalle piogge dell’inverno 1990 (pp. 51–73) .CNR-GNDCI Vol. spec. Editoriale BIOS Cosenza.
Cui, H., Stein, A., & Myers, D. E. (1995). Extension of spatial information, bayesian kriging and updating of prior variogram parameters. Environmetrics, 6, 373–384.
de Vries, W., Römkens, P. F. A. M., & Bonten, L. T. C. (2008). Spatially explicit integrated risk assessment of present soil concentrations of cadmium, lead, copper and zinc in The Netherlands. Water, Air, and Soil Pollution, 191, 199–215.
Dell’Anna, L., Rizzo, V., & Simone, A. (1981). Composizione mineralogica e granulometrica e alcune caratteristiche geotecniche delle argille infraplioceniche della Media Valle del Fiume Crati. Caratteri distintivi delle argille in frana. Rendiconti Società Italiana di Mineralogia e Petrologia, 37, 161–178.
De Vivo, B., Lima, A., Bove, M. A., Albanese, S., Cicchella, D., Sabatini, G., et al. (2008). Environmental geochemical maps of Italy from the FOREGS database. Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis, 8, 267–277.
Deutsch, C. V., & Journel, A. G. (1998). GSLIB: geostatistical software library and user’s guide. New York: Oxford University Press.
Emery, X. (2005a). Multigaussian kriging for point-support estimation: incorporating constraints on the sum of the kriging weights. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 20, 53–65.
Emery, X. (2005b). Simple and ordinary multigaussian kriging for estimating recoverable reserves. Mathematical Geology, 37, 295–319.
Emery, X., & Ortiz, J. M. (2005). Histogram and variogram inference in the multigaussian model. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 19, 48–58.
Giaccio, L., Cicchella, D., DeVivo, B., Lombardi, G., & De Rosa, M. (2012). Does heavy metal pollution affects semen quality in men? A case of study in the metropolitan area of Naples (Italy). Journal of Geochemical Exploration, 112, 218–225.
Goodchild, M. F., Parks, B. O., & Steyaret, L. T. (1993). Environmental modelling with GIS. New York: Oxford University Press.
Goovaerts, P. (1997). Geostatistics for natural resources evaluation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Goovaerts, P. (1999). Geostatistics in soil science: state-of-the-art and perspectives. Geoderma, 89, 1–45.
Grunsky, E. C., Drew, L. J., David, M., & Sutphin, D. M. (2009). Process recognition in multi-element soil and stream-sediment geochemical data. Applied Geochemistry, 24, 1602–1616.
Grunwald, S. (2009). Multi-criteria characterization of recent digital soil mapping and modeling approaches. Geoderma, 152, 195–207.
Johnson, C. C., & Ander, E. L. (2008). Urban geochemical mapping studies: how and why we do them. Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 30, 511–530.
Lanzafame, G., & Tortorici, L. (1981). La tettonica recente della Valle del Fiume Crati (Calabria). Geografia Fisica e Dinamica Quaternaria, 4, 11–21.
Larocque, G., Dutilleul, P., Pelletier, B., & Fyles, J. W. (2006). Conditional Gaussian co-simulation of regionalized components of soil variation. Geoderma, 134, 1–16.
Le Pera, E., & Sorriso-Valvo, M. (2000). Weathering and morphogenesis in a mediterranean climate, Calabria, Italy. Geomorphology, 34, 251–270.
Le Pera, E., Critelli, S., & Sorriso-Valvo, M. (2001). Weathering of gneiss in Calabria, southern Italy. Catena, 42, 1–15.
Lee, C. S., Li, X., Shi, W., Cheung, S. C., & Thornton, I. (2006). Metal contamination in urban, suburban, and country park soils of Hong Kong: a study based on GIS and multivariate statistics. The Science of the Total Environment, 356, 45–61.
Li, P., Wang, X., Zhang, T., Zhou, D., & He, Y. (2009). Distribution and accumulation of copper and cadmium in soil–rice system as affected by soil amendments. Water, Air, and Soil Pollution, 196, 29–40.
Lima, A., Plant, J. A., De Vivo, B., Tarvainen, T., Albanese, S., & Cicchella, D. (2008). Interpolation methods for geochemical maps: a comparative study using arsenic data from European stream waters. Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis, 8, 41–48.
Matheron, G. (1976). A simple substitute for conditional expectation: the disjunctive kriging. In M. Guarascio, et al. (Eds.), Advanced geostatistics in the mining industry (pp. 221–236). Proceedings of NATO A.S.I. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Morton-Bermea, O., Hernández-Álvarez, E., González-Hernández, G., Romero, F., Lozano, R., & Beramendi-Orosco, L. E. (2009). Assessment of heavy metal pollution in urban topsoils from the metropolitan area of Mexico City. Journal of Geochemical Exploration, 101, 218–224.
Olea, R. (1991). Geostatistical glossary and multilingual dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press.
Romic, M., & Romic, D. (2003). Heavy metals distribution in agricultural topsoils in urban area. Environmental Geology, 43, 795–805.
Saito, H., & Goovaerts, P. (2000). Geostatistical interpolation of positively skewed and censored data in a dioxin-contaminated sites. Environmental Science and Technology, 34, 4228–4235.
Salvador-Blanes, S., Cornu, S., Bourennane, H., & King, D. (2006). Controls of the spatial variability of Cr concentration in topsoils of a central French landscape. Geoderma, 132, 143–157.
Selinus, O., Alloway, B., Centeno, J. A., Finkelman, R. B., Fuge, R., Lindh, U., et al. (2005). Essentials of medical geology. Impacts of the natural environment on public health. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Shi, J., Wang, H., Xu, J., Wu, J., Liu, X., Zhu, H., et al. (2007). Spatial distribution of heavy metals in soils: a case study of Changxing, China. Environmental Geology, 52, 1–10.
Singh, M., Müller, G., & Singh, I. B. (2002). Heavy metals in freshly deposited stream sediments of rivers associated with urbanisation of the Ganga Plain, India. Water, Air, and Soil Pollution, 141, 35–54.
Teng, Y., Ni, S., Wang, J., Zuo, R., & Yang, J. (2010). A geochemical survey of trace elements in agricultural and non-agricultural topsoil in Dexing area, China. Journal of Geochemical Exploration, 104, 118–127.
Tortorici, L., Catalano, S., & Monaco, C. (2009). Ophiolite-bearing mélanges in southern Italy. Geological Journal, 44, 153–166.
Verly, G. (1983). The multigaussian approach and its application to the estimation of local reserves. Mathematical Geology, 15, 259–286.
Wackernagel, H. (2003). Multivariate geostatistics: an introduction with applications. Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer.
Webster, R., & Oliver, M. A. (2001). Geostatistics for environmental scientists. Chichester: Wiley.
Acknowledgments
The quality of this study was greatly enhanced by the cooperation and interest of Dr Gabriele Buttafuoco, researcher of National Research Council of Italy—Institute for Agricultural and Forest Systems in the Mediterranean (ISAFOM), whose advices on geostatistics and help with subsequent analysis were invaluable. The authors thank Dr. Luca Fedele (Virginia Tech) for valuable comments and language editing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Guagliardi, I., Cicchella, D. & De Rosa, R. A Geostatistical Approach to Assess Concentration and Spatial Distribution of Heavy Metals in Urban Soils. Water Air Soil Pollut 223, 5983–5998 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-012-1333-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-012-1333-z