GEOSTATISTICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF POLLUTED SOILS

Soil is one of the most endangered environmental compartments. Heavy metals are an important group of anthropogenic pollution sources. The high environmental variability of the metal contents of soil strongly limits the objective assessment of the pollution state. Geostatistical methods are an useful tool for the investigation of the spatial structure of pollutants and the objective description of the degree and the area of pollution. To demonstrate the applicability and the efficiency, semivariogram analysis and the kriging method have been applied to the investigation of the heavy metal pollution of soil in the surroundings of a large metallurgical plant. The character of the spatial distribution and the polluted territory can be assessed by application of these methods. It is possible to determine the minimum number of samples required for a representative description of the investigated area.