Abstract
In key areas of ecological protection, it is significant to consider the similarity of pollution sources among heavy metals and the interaction between different sources, especially the ecological risk areas caused by heavy metal pollution. We collected 51 soil samples from five land use types with different soil depths in an industrial area on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Two and three major heavy metal combination types of Cd, Cu, Cr, Pb and Zn in different soil layers were identified using absolute principal component score-multiple linear regression models, and the potential pollution sources corresponding to the different types were quantified using Geo-Detector models. Factor-detector explanatory power of the land use type (q = 0.66) was much higher than that of the other factors of APCS1 in soil layer A, which was the most likely potential sources of Cd and Pb with high levels in urban land and irrigated land. Industrial activities, especially metallurgy and mining, are the most likely potential sources of Cd, Cu and Pb pollution. The downward migration of heavy metals in the study area was inferred from the similar trends of several indicators between soil layers A and B. The new model Nemerow Integrated Risk Index (NIRI) was used to analyse the integrated ecological risk across the study area and under different land use types by comparing with the pollution load index and Nemerow Integrated Pollution Index, and it was found that the risk level was lower in grassland and forest land than under other land use types, while it was higher in urban land and irrigated land. The contribution rate of Cd to NIRI values exceeded 80%, while the contribution rates of the 5 heavy metals to NIPI and PLI values are not significantly different, indicating that NIRI can highlight the impact of high cadmium toxicity factors on the overall risk level and is more accurate and flexible in identifying risk areas.
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Data availability
Basic datasets was provided by National Tibetan Plateau Data Center (http://data.tpdc.ac.cn) and the study datasets used and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- PLI:
-
Pollution Load Index
- NIPI:
-
Nemerow Integrated Pollution Index
- NIRI:
-
Nemerow Integrated Risk Index
- APCS:
-
Absolute principal component scores
- APCSn:
-
Absolute principal component scores type n
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Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to the data team from National Tibetan Plateau Data Center (http://data.tpdc.ac.cn) for providing us with solid experimental basic data. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42071254). The grantee is Prof. Jian Gong (Corresponding author).
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42071254). The grantee is Prof. Jian Gong (Corresponding author).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Conception and design of the study, Methodology, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review and Editing: HG; Conceptualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Final approval of the version to be submitted: JG; Software, Validation, Drafting the article, Writing—Review and Editing: JY; Investigation, Resources: GC; Data Curation, Software: TY.
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Gao, H., Gong, J., Yang, J. et al. Heavy metal pollution and ecological risk under different land use types: based on the similarity of pollution sources and comparing the results of three evaluation models. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 37, 3893–3913 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-023-02486-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-023-02486-1