Fourteen bed sediments samples were collected from the Euphrates River in order to determine concentrations, seasonal, spatial and contamination assessment of heavy metals such as Pb, Cd, Zn, Cu, Ni, Co, Fe, Mn and Cr. The mean concentrations are as follows: 2249.47 mg/kg for Fe, 228.18 mg/kg for Mn, 67.08 mg/kg for Ni, 58.4 mg/kg for Cr, 48.00 mg/kg for Zn, 28.16 mg/kg for Co, 22.56 mg/kg for Pb, 18.91 mg/kg for Cu and 1.87 mg/kg for Cd. To assess metal contamination in sediments, sediment quality guidelines were applied. The mean concentration of Cd, Cu, Ni, Fe, Mn, and Cr exceeded the USEPA guideline. The metal contamination in the sediments was also evaluated by appling enrichment factor (EF), contamination factor (CF), geo-accumulation index (Igeo) and pollution load index (PLI). Based on enrichment factor (EF), the Euphrates River sediments have very high enrichment for Pb, extremely high for Cd, moderate for Zn, significant to very high for Ni, very high to extremely high for Co, moderate to significant for Mn and significant to very high for Cr. According to contamination factor (CF), Cd and Cr are responsible for very high contamination. According to Igeo, the Euphrates River sediments are moderately to strongly polluted by Cd. Based on PLI, all sampling sites suggest no overall pollution of site quality

Multivariate statistical method including cluster analysis (CA) was used to assess temporal and spatial variations in the water quality of Euphrates River, Iraq, for a period 2008-2009 using 16 parameters at 11 sampling sites. Hierarchical CA grouped the 8 months into three periods (I, II and III) and classified the 11 sampling sites into two groups (I and II) based on similarities of water quality characteristics. The temporal pattern shows that April has higher pollution level relative to the other months. Spatially, sampling site 7 (S7) has lower pollution level while the other sampling sites have higher pollution level. Thus, this study shows usefulness of cluster analysis method for analyzing and interpreting of surface water dataset to assess the temporal and spatial variations in the water quality parameters and the optimization of regional water quality sampling network.

To evaluate the concentrations of heavy metals and identification of their sources, 20 composite soil samples were collected randomly in Fallujah city, Iraq. To assess the pollution level, we used the soil metal index (SMI) and enrichment factor. We investigated the sources of heavy metal using the chemometric techniques such as correlation analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA). The concentrations of Pb and Co have a normal distribution in soil of the study area. Zn and Cd have an approximately normal distribution, and Ni, Cu, and Cr have a nonnormal distribution. Our results revealed that the urban soils in Fallujah city were unpolluted by heavy metals and showed a significant to extremely high enrichments of heavy metals controlled by anthropogenic activities. The moderate to strong positive correlations among Cd, Co, Cu, Cr, Ni, Pb, and Zn suggest that these metals have common sources. The chemometric techniques identify that the source of Cu, Co and Pb is controlled by lithogenic origin and that the source of Cr, Ni and Cd is controlled by mixed sources (lithogenic and anthropogenic).