A Rapid, Accurate, and Efficient Method to Map Heavy Metal-Contaminated Soils of Abandoned Mine Sites Using Converted Portable XRF Data and GIS

Jangwon Suh, Hyeongyu Lee and Yosoon Choi
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Jangwon Suh: John & Willie Leone Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16802, USA
Hyeongyu Lee: Korea Environment Institute, Sejong 30147, Korea
Yosoon Choi: Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan 48513, Korea

IJERPH, 2016, vol. 13, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: The use of portable X-ray fluorescence (PXRF) and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) increases the rapidity and accuracy of soil contamination mapping, respectively. In practice, it is often necessary to repeat the soil contamination assessment and mapping procedure several times during soil management within a limited budget. In this study, we have developed a rapid, inexpensive, and accurate soil contamination mapping method using a PXRF data and geostatistical spatial interpolation. To obtain a large quantity of high quality data for interpolation, in situ PXRF data analyzed at 40 points were transformed to converted PXRF data using the correlation between PXRF and ICP-AES data. The method was applied to an abandoned mine site in Korea to generate a soil contamination map for copper and was validated for investigation speed and prediction accuracy. As a result, regions that required soil remediation were identified. Our method significantly shortened the time required for mapping compared to the conventional mapping method and provided copper concentration estimates with high accuracy similar to those measured by ICP-AES. Therefore, our method is an effective way of mapping soil contamination if we consistently construct a database based on the correlation between PXRF and ICP-AES data.

Keywords: soil contamination mapping; portable X-ray fluorescence (PXRF); geographic information systems (GIS); ordinary Kriging; heavy metal contamination; abandoned mine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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