Quantitative Analysis of the Factors Influencing Soil Heavy Metal Lateral Migration in Rainfalls Based on Geographical Detector Software: A Case Study in Huanjiang County, China

• Main Authors: Pengwei Qiao, Mei Lei, Guanghui Guo, Jun Yang, Xiaoyong Zhou, Tongbin Chen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-07-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: soil heavy metals; lateral migration; influential factors; quantitative analysis; contribution degree; geographical detector
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/7/1227

Quantitative analysis of the factors influencing heavy metal migration could be useful for controlling heavy metal migration. In this paper, a geographical detector was used to calculate the contributions of and interactions among factors in Huanjiang County, South China, covering an area of 273 km2. In this paper, nine factors were analyzed. The results showed that, among these factors, soil type was the main factor influencing the migration of As, Pb and Cd; the other eight factors did not have big differences and were lower than soil type. In addition, there were obvious synergistic effects between the soil type and concentration of water-soluble heavy metals (CWS) and the concentration of water-insoluble heavy metals (CWI) and NDVI. Therefore, these factors of the study area were especially focused on. Furthermore, the results of the key factor identification and the high-risk region identification in the nine factors were reliable, based on the geographical detector software. Therefore, the geographical detector software could be used as an effective tool to quantitatively analyze the contribution of the factors, and identify the high-risk regions for the factors influencing soil heavy metal lateral migration in rainfalls.