Combination of Magnetic Parameters: An Efficient Way to Discriminate Soil Contamination Sources (A Case Study: The Soils Surrounding Zanjan)

Subject Areas : Water and Environment

Ali Afashari ¹ , hossein khademi ²

1 - MSc Student of Soil Science, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
2 - Professor of Soil Science, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran

Received: 2016-07-23 Accepted : 2016-07-23 Published : 2016-03-20

Keywords: soil, Magnetic parameters, Human pollution, Heavy Metals,

Abstract :

The present research was aimed to assess soils in Zanjan province using magnetic susceptibility technique. For this purpose, in an area of 2,000 km2, number of 241 samples was selected in grid manner. Magnetic susceptibility of soil samples was read by using Bartington MS2 model. To determine the relationship between heavy metals, physicochemical properties and magnetic parameters the principal components analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) were considered. According to the results, magnetic susceptibility (χlf) in land uses dry farming, irrigated farming, garden, rangeland and urban area were obtained about 314.0, 265.4, 321.5, 455.6 and 519.2 (10-8m3kg-1) respectively. Frequency dependent mean magnetic susceptibility in for each land uses were found to be 1.5, 2.0, 1.8, 1.2 and 1.1% respectively. As per principal components analysis the first five components were detected where those first to fifth explained about 20.5, 18.1, 16.2, 9.65 and 8.50% of the total variance. Cluster analysis identified two factors: The first factor in clouded magnetic susceptibility, sand, organic matter, EC, cadmium, copper, lead and zinc, the second one was frequency dependent magnetic susceptibility, lime, pH, CEC, silt, clay, chrome, nickel, cobalt and manganese. The formers are most affected by anthropogenic activities and the latter are controlled by parent materials. The spatial distributions of magnetic susceptibility results are quite consistent with the statistical results of magnetic susceptibility in different land uses. The maximum values of magnetic susceptibility was observed in samples of igneous rocks (basalt, porphyritic, granite).