Geo-Statistical Analysis of Soil Pollutants of Tannery Industrial Area, Kanpur

Earth’s soil is a valuable natural resource that is easily damaged by excessive agriculture, industrialization, and other industrial or environmental activities. Accurate and rapid assessment of soil properties is key component of the agriculture. Heavy metals pollution and their toxic levels in soils is one of the major problems associated with the environment. The main objective is to measure the soil properties and their spatial variability. A combination of conventional analytical methods and geostatistical methods were used to analyze the data for spatial variability. A total of 50 Soil samples were collected grid wise at an interval of 500 m with the help of Global Positioning System (GPS) from the plough layer (0-25 cm) covering the study area which is highly contaminated. A classical ordinary kriging (OK) interpolation method with three types Spherical, Gaussian and Exponential were used in ArcGIS software. The findings showed that Cd varied from 3.6 to 24, Cr from 44.6 to 4596, EC from 0.41 to 1.230, OC from 0.2 to 1.54 and pH from 7 to 8.3. There was a strong spatial dependence for chromium, moderate for cadmium and weak for pH, EC and OC. Semivariograms showed spherical model best for cadmium and chromium, gaussian for OC and exponential model best fitted for pH and EC.