Assessment of the Geographical Detector Method for investigating heavy metal source apportionment in an urban watershed of Eastern China

作者：Lili Luo, Kun Mei, Liyin Qu, Chi Zhang, Han Chen, Siyu Wang, Di Di, Hong Huang, Zhenfeng Wang, Fang Xia, Randy A. Dahlgren, Minghua Zhang · 发表于：The Science of The Total Environment · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.424 · 被引用次数：105 · 研究领域：Heavy metals in environment、Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping、Water Quality and Pollution Assessment

Assessing heavy metal pollution in river sediments and identifying the key factors contributing to metal pollution are critical components for devising river environmental protection and remediation strategies to protect human and ecological health. This is especially important in urban areas where metals from a wide range of sources contribute to sediment pollution. In this study, the metal enrichment factor (EF) was used to measure the watershed distribution of Cu, Zn, Pb and Cd in sediments in the Wen-Rui Tang urban river system in Wenzhou, Eastern China. The Geographical Detector Method (GDM) was specifically evaluated for its ability to analyze spatial relationships between metal EFs and their anthropogenic and natural control factors, including densities of industry (DI), livestock (DL), service industries (DS), population (DP), and roads (DR), along with agricultural area (AG), sediment total organic carbon (TOC), and soil types (ST). Results showed that the watershed was highly contaminated by all metals with an EF trend of Cd ≫ Zn > Cu > Pb. The spatial distribution of EFs demonstrated high contamination of all metals in the southwestern region of the watershed where industrial activities were concentrated, and higher Cu and Zn concentrations in the northeastern region having a high density of livestock production. GDM results identified DI as the dominant determinant for all metals, while TOC and ST were determined to have a moderate secondary influence for Zn, Pb a...