Historical Development and its Effect on Soil Contamination in Urban Areas

This SoBRA funded project creates a new methodology for identifying local sources of contamination and relationships between historical urban development and groups of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in urban soils. The Belfast Tellus data is used to create the methodology, which is then tested on Sheffield using GBASE data. Eleven PTEs are considered within this research; arsenic (As), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), molybdenum (Mo), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), antimony (Sb), tin (Sn), vanadium (V) and zinc (Zn). These elements are expected to be related to different geogenic and anthropogenic sources within the study areas.

Rebekka McIlwaine, Siobhan Cox, Rory Doherty and Mark Cave (2016)