Heavy metal contamination in arable land of Chongming based on GIS and Geostatistics

Soil heavy metal pollution has increasing applied pressure on land resources with the intensive effects of local geochemistry or human activities in recent years. This investigation was conducted to understand the spatial variability of the soil heavy metal elements, to evaluate the relationship between heavy metals and their probable sources and to identify or forewarn the probable heavy metal contamination area in Chongming based on Geostatistics and GIS. The effective interpolation and analysis strategy was explored by combing the interpolating model derived from dataset excluding outlier with the performance of Universal Kriging on dataset including outlier to meet this need. The experimental results showed that the spatial variability characteristics and pollution situation of heavy metals accorded to that was investigated through field work, which suggested the scheme concerned the outlier was reasonable and effective. The further improvement of the approach is needed for more extensive application.