This study provides baseline information for environmental assessment in North Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It assessed the concentrations of eight heavy metals, namely cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), vanadium (V), and zinc (Zn), in 28 surface soil samples collected across the area. Pollution status was evaluated using the contamination factor (CF), geoaccumulation index (Igeo), enrichment factor (EF), pollution load index (PLI), and degree of contamination (DC), while Pearson correlation, principal component analysis (PCA), and standardized hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were applied to identify the possible sources of these metals. Iron was the most abundant element (mean 8482.14 mg kg−1), consistent with its role as a major crustal constituent. Co, Cr, Fe, Ni, and V showed low contamination (CF < 1) and a predominantly geogenic origin, reflected in strong inter-element correlations and a dominant rotated principal component explaining 54.8% of the total variance; Cu, Pb, and, in particular, Zn departed from this pattern, loading together on a distinct secondary component (32.1% of variance) and showing localized enrichment at a small number of sites. None of the 28 samples exceeded the pollution threshold for PLI (all < 1) or DC (all < 8), indicating that the soils of North Riyadh remain overall unpolluted with respect to these eight metals. These findings provide an early geochemical baseline for the district and identify Cu–Pb–Zn enrichment near construction and traffic corridors.
A. El-Sorogy, Saad S. Alarifi, K. Al-Kahtany et al.· Land· 0 citations
Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs) contamination of the soil is a global environmental problem, which can seriously affect the ecosystem, agricultural development, and human health. To evaluate the degree of potentially toxic metal contamination, 32 soil samples were collected from different sites in the Yanbu and Khulais areas of Saudi Arabia to analyze eight PTEs (Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Ni, Pb, V, and Zn). The contamination indices used including the Geo-accumulation Index (Igeo), Enrichment Factor (EF), Contamination Factor (CF), and Pollution Load Index (PLI), as well as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) for source identification. Because metals taken up from soil can move along the soil-to-plant pathway into crops, characterizing the degree and likely origin of potentially toxic metal enrichment in agricultural soil is a necessary first step for any subsequent land-management or food-safety assessment, particularly in a country that imports the majority of its food. The results of PCA and HCA indicate that the basement rocks of Arabian Shield-associated minerals are a plausible primary source of these potentially toxic elements. The mean EF values of the PTEs in decreasing order are as follows: Co (0.93) > Ni (0.92) > Cu (0.80) > Zn (0.74) > V (0.65) > Cr (0.59) > Pb (0.27). This implies that the soils in the study area are not enriched or only slightly enriched with PTEs. According to the geoaccumulation index values, nearly every PTE was classified as practically unpolluted (Igeo < 0), the exception being Ni, which reached the unpolluted-to-moderately-polluted class (Igeo ≥ 0) at four Khulais sites. The CF and PLI values indicate that the soil is unpolluted on average. In summary, the combined pollution-index and multivariate framework offers a practical geochemical screening tool for this arid coastal region; monitoring soil quality in this way is a useful contribution to sustainable land management in water- and land-limited environments.
A. El-Sorogy, M. Shokr, Khalid Al-Kahtany et al.· Sustainability· 0 citations
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