Assessment and mapping of environmental quality in agricultural soils of Zhejiang Province, China

Heavy metal concentrations in agricultural soils of Zhejiang Province were monitored to indicate the status of heavy metal contamination and assess environmental quality of agricultural soils. A total of 908 soil samples were collected from 38 counties in Zbejiang Province and eight heavy metal （Cd, Cr, Pb, Hg, Cu, Zn, Ni and As） concentrations had been evaluated in agricultural soil. It was found 775 samples were unpolluted and 133 samples were slightly polluted and more respectively, that is approximately 14.65% agricultural soil samples had the heavy metal concentration above the threshold level in this province by means of Nemerow＇s synthetical pollution index method according to the second grade of Standards for Soil Environmental Quality of China （GB15618- 1995）. Contamination of Cd was the highest, followed by Ni, As and Zn were lower correspondingly. Moreover, Inverse Distance Weighted （IDW） interpolation method was used to make an assessment map of soil environmental quality based on the Nemerow＇s pollution index and the soil environmental quality was categorized into five grades. Moreover, ten indices were calculated as input parameters for principal component analysis （PCA） and the principal components （PCs） were created to compare environmental quality of different soils and regions. The results revealed that environmental quality of tea soils was better than that of paddy soils, vegetable soils and fruit soils. This study indicated that GIS combined with multivariate statistical approaches proved to be effective and powerful tool in the mapping of soil contamination distribution and the assessment of soil environmental quality on provincial scale, which is beneficial to environmental protection and management decision-making by local government.

Assessing Reclamation Levels of Coastal Saline Lands with Integrated Stepwise Discriminant Analysis and Laboratory Hyperspectral Data

At different times over the past 30 years in Zhejiang Province, China, the coastal tidelands have been successively enclosed and reclaimed for agricultural land use. The purpose of this work was to evaluate whether laboratory hyperspectral data might be used to estimate the physicochemical characteristics of these reclaimed saline soils. A coastal region of Shangyu City (Zhejiang Province), which was grouped into four subzones according to reclamation history, was used as the study area, and soil samples were collected in each subzone. Physicochemical analyses showed that the soils were characterized by high electrical conductivity and sand content with low organic matter; the longer the saline lands had been reclaimed, the lower were the electrical conductivity and sand content and the higher the organic matter content. These changing trends of soil chemical and physical properties were found in laboratory reflectance spectra of soil samples and their first-order derivative curves. Stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) identified six salient spectral bands at 488, 530, 670, 880, 1400, and 1900 nm. Using derived discriminant functions for saline lands with different historical years of reclamation, classification revealed an overall accuracy from a self-test of 86.6% and from cross-validation of 89.3%. Therefore, as opposed to time-consuming field investigations, this study suggested that remotely sensed hyperspectral data could serve as a promising measure to assess the reclamation levels of coastal saline lands.