Pedogeochemical mapping of Cr, Ni, and Cu in soils of the Barcelona Province (Catalonia, Spain): Relationships with soil physico-chemical characteristics

Levels and pedogeochemical mapping of lead and chromium in soils of Barcelona province (NE Spain)

“…Only one case of these sites presents high values of Cr and Pb at the same time; it is in the Alt Penedès district, in the SW of Barcelona province, near the limit with Tarragona province. The facts that, according to earlier studies (Bech et al, 2008b), this hot spot has also high values of other trace elements, and the different geochemical affinities of the two metals studied here (Cr lithophile and Pb chalcophile), suggest a likely anthropic origin of these high values instead of geogenical causes.…”

“…Each target sample had about 1500 g and was air-dried and sieved with a 2 mm screen (Bech et al, 2008b). Soil samples (b2 mm fraction) were analysed by standard methods.…”

“…Further information about the soil sampling performed in this data set and also a detailed discussion of relationships with soil physicochemical characteristics of Pb in the central area of Barcelona province and of Cr, for the whole province, were reported in Bech et al (2008a) and Bech et al (2008b), respectively. Table 1 presents a summary of topsoil Cr and Pb concentration statistical selected parameters, including, among others, mean, maximum, minimum, standard deviation, skewness and usual percentile values (5, 25, 50, 75, 90 and 98).…”

Pedogeochemical mapping and background limit of trace elements in soils of Branicevo Province (Serbia)

“…for Windows has been used for statistical analyses. Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) has been used for statistical description of data: histogram, box-plot and cumulative probability plot -CDF Bech et al, 2008). The nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests have been used to analyse the mean trace elements contents in data sub-set organized according to districts.…”

“…For this reason, some authors prefer [Median ± 2MAD] and Tukey's box-plot Díez et al, 2009). On the other hand, graphical methods, EDA (histogram, and especially box plot and cumulative probability plot) enable much better insight in data structure, inflection points and possible background limits (Bech et al, 2005(Bech et al, , 2008. Besides chosing a method, another big problem arises from statistical calculation of background limits.…”