Repellency as a criterion for urban topsoil quality assessment

Abstract

Urban soil quality standards are very complex because of a lot of chemical, physical and biological indicators. That is why soil pollution by heavy metals prevails in the topsoil quality evaluation schemes. Soil repellence and specific surface area were examined in this study as physical indicators of urban soil quality that can be detected in composite topsoil samples, common for sanitary soil quality evaluation. It was discovered that more repellent topsoil with smaller specific surface area is typical to the topsoil from industrial and traffic environs and centrum of Šiauliai and Joniškis towns. A high percentage of repellent and consequently lower quality topsoil samples were discovered.