Resource approach to assessment of heavy metal pollution of soils and studying the capacity of geochemical barriers on the example of Kursk City
The results of ecological assessment of Kursk soils condition with the use of the resource approach are presented in the article. For calculating the conditional standards of heavy metals (HM) reserves in soils and a comprehensive assessment of the ecological state of the soil cover, it was proposed to take into account regional peculiarities of the physicochemical properties of the soil and apply the author’s regional HM standard. The reserves of accomodation of heavy metals and the nature of their profile distribution in several types of soils (Urbanozems, Urban dark-gray soils, dark gray soils, alluvial plain soils, sandy podzols) with anthropogenic load of various levels and character are deter-mined. It is revealed that the soil of the city has both superficial and deep-profile pollution. The most polluted soils with deeply concentrated reserves of HM turned out to be Urbanozems industrial zones. It is noted that Pb, Cd and Zn are the main pollutants among HM. Their reserves exceed the proposed regional conditional MPC 5.9, 29.0 and 1.1 times, respectively. The resource approach allowed us to estimate the potential and saturation of the geochemical barriers of Kursk soils. A high capacity of the humus geochemical barrier is noted, which allows depositing most of the HM in the humus-accumulative horizons of the Alluvial gleyic soils and Urban dark-gray soils.