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Statistical Methods for Evaluation of Geochemical Baseline Levels of Some Toxic Elements in Surface Soils

L. H. Sun

Abstract


Determination of environmental baseline is important for environmental studies and most of the previous studies based on mathematic methods. For revealing the environmental baseline of toxic elements in the agriculture soils in Suzhou, northern Anhui Province, China, the analytical results of four kinds of toxic elements (As, Cu, Pb and Zn) in fifty-four soil samples from the woodland near Suzhou have been treated by two kinds of model based objective methods (iterative 2σ technique and the calculated distribution function), the results suggest that these samples are unpolluted by Cu, Pb and Zn except for As relative to the soil environmental background value of China. The baseline of As, Cu, Pb and Zn are calculated to be 5.7-22.6, 10.4-25.6, 14.4-27.5 and 29.7-93.3 mg or kg, respectively, and the threshold of As, Cu, Pb and Zn between anthropogenic contribution and natural baseline are 22.6, 25.6, 27.5 and 93.3 mg or kg, respectively. The study demonstrated that model based objective methods can be used for establishing the environmental baseline values, especially for local studies with small dataset.

Keywords


Geochemical baseline, toxic elements, statistical method, normal distribution

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