Determination of the most important microbial indicators as soil health index in Cadmium and Lead contaminated soils

Soltani Toolarood, Ali Ashraf; Einazi Nai, Manizheh; Shahab, Hosein; Ghavidel, Akbar; Ghasemi, Somaie

Determination of the most important microbial indicators as soil health index in Cadmium and Lead contaminated soils

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Ali Ashraf Soltani Toolarood ¹

Manizheh Einazi Nai ²

Hosein Shahab ³

Akbar Ghavidel ⁴

Somaie Ghasemi ⁴

¹ faculty member - department of soil science- university of Mohaghegh Arabili

² Graduated Student

³ Faculty member

⁴ faculty member

Abstract

Soil contamination with Cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) due to their potentially toxic effects on the soil biota activity and biodiversity, has been widely considered in recent decades. In this research, 12 soil samples contaminated with Cadmium and Lead were taken from the upper 20 cm at different points of the Shahid Tondgooian oil refinery and some biological properties such as basal soil respiration, induced soil respiration, bacterial population, mushroom population, Carbon microbial biomass, urease enzyme activity and L-asparaginase were measured as soil health indicators. Environment contamination assumed as a common factor that affecting the soil biological factors and using principal component analysis (PCA), the most important biological indicators that indicate soil health were extracted. The results showed that two factors affect more than 90% of total changes in soil health indices, and two indices of fungal population and enzyme activity have the highest correlation with the first factor, therefore, these are the most sensitive indices in soil contamination with cadmium and lead. Also basal soil respiration and induced soil respiration have the highest correlation with the second factor, and these two cases are the second sensitive group of soil biological properties to environmental pollution

Keywords

Heavy metals

Bioindicator

Factor analysis