Pollution Assessment of Slabiat Soil Depression Southwestern Iraq

Abstract

Slabiat is one of the main depressions in Iraq, located between Al-Muthanna and Di Qar Governorate. The depression is to be a natural storage area for the excess water of the Euphrates River in times of floods. The heavy metals Ni, Co, Cr, Fe, Pb, As, Cu, Cd, Zn, Mn and B were measured soil samples using Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), a grain size analysis of soil showed the predomant of sand and silt, the acidity of functions was between basic and natural, and the electrical conductivity and total organic carbon were analyzed. The concentrations of above heavy metals are (82, 8, 47, 4887, 2.5, 4, 23.5, 0.034, 24, 215.9) ppm, respectively. The pollution indices (geochemical aggregation coefficient, concentration coefficient and enrichment coefficient) indicate that the soil of the study area is not polluted with heavy metals in comparison. with global soils except for boron, arsenic and nickel which were pollutants caused by human activity in the area, the specific PLI (pollution of the load index) values were higher than zero but less than 1 indicating minimal soil degradation. The results were compared with the specific levels of soil pollutants provided by the US Department of Environment.