UNGARO F., Marchi N, Calzolari C, Guermandi M, 2012, REGIONAL GEOCHEMICAL MAPPING OF TOPSOIL HEAVY METALS_ A SCORPAN KRIGING APPROACH CONDITIONAL ON SOIL MAP DELINEATIONS AND LAND USE, Proceeding of the 7th EUropean congress on REgional GEOscientific cartography and Information systems, pp. 662–663, Bologna, 12-15 Luglio,
URL: http://www.cnr.it/prodotto/i/193929

According to the Italian Legislative Decree 152/06 of April 3rd, 2006, concerning the consolidated law governing environmental issues ("Testo Unico recante le Norme in Materia Ambientale"), the Contamination Threshold Value is defined as follows (art. 240, comma 1, letter b): "threshold values are the values of contamination of environmental matrix above which the characterization and specific risk analysis of the contaminated site, as described in the Appendix 5 at part four of the present law, becomes necessary. In the event the potentially polluted site is located in an area where geogenic or anthropogenic factors are responsible for exceeding the threshold values for some parameters, the background content of these parameters is assumed as threshold." In the last decades the increase of industrial activities and the massive use of pesticides in agriculture, enhanced the risk of soil contamination by pollutants. Among these, heavy metals, due to their persistence, accumulate in soils possibly reaching concentrations above regulatory contamination thresholds. An accurate knowledge of the "usual" background content of metals in soils is then necessary to assess their contamination state. Aim of this work is to map the concentration of topsoil heavy metals using a Scorpan Kriging approach. The approach combines the trend of metals concentrations, as derived from the 1_50,000 soil map, with geostatistical modeling of the stochastic, locally varying but spatially correlated component. The trend component is described in terms of varying local means, calculated accounting for soil pedo-geochemical affinity and dominant land use.

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