Data of OECD soil and leachate resulting from irrigation with aqueous solution containing trace metals at increasing sodium concentration

Abstract

The accumulation of trace metals in soils is one of the main drawbacks when reclaimed waters are used as irrigation sources in agriculture. Such secondary water sources often also contain high levels of salinity and in detail sodium. How the presence of sodium influences the fate of trace metals in the environment is still obscure and of primary importance in defining sustainable agricultural management guidelines. Standard OECD soil columns were subjected to 25 days irrigation with aqueous solutions containing trace concentrations of Cd, Cu, Ni and Zn at increasing sodium content. The dataset is supplementary to the data presented and discussed in “Effect of sodium concentration on mobilization and fate of trace metals in standard OECD soil” [1]. The leachates collected from the columns were deeply characterized in terms of concentration of metals, organic (monitored through UV-VIS, 3DEEM, E 4 /E 6 ratio, COD) and inorganic matter (monitored as Al concentration). The dataset was analyzed by PCA and “Paerson” correlation coefficient.