Application of AHP – Entropy–TOPSIS methodology for  soil heavy metal classification: Analysis of soil environment status in Jingshan as a case study

Abstract

Given the complexity of the soil environment, the evaluation of soil pollution should consider the comprehensive weight of multiple evaluation factors to obtain highly objective and scientific conclusions. In this paper, two main ways are proposed to comprehensively analyze the degree of heavy metal pollution in the region: the combination of subjective weight (the analytic hierarchy process method) and objective weight (the entropy method) to determine the combination weight, and the use of the TOPSIS method to quantify the relative relationship between samples and the soil background values in the study area and analyze the spatial and geographical distribution of heavy metal elements in the samples.Analysis results show that the weight ranking of 31 out of 56 samples in the study area is higher than that based on the soil background value of Hubei Province, indicating that 55.36% of the samples had a comprehensive pollution degree lower than the soil background value of Hubei Province. According to the spatial distribution of heavy metal pollution, the soil pollution status in the study area is poor, and some parts are polluted by heavy metals to a certain extent.