The detection of roadside pollution of rapidly growing city in arid region using the magnetic proxies

This work is a complementary investigation to the earlier urban soil survey for a rapidly growing city of relatively high traffic density. Therefore, it aims to apply the environmental magnetism approach to assess the roadside pollution at a known polluted site. The used magnetic proxies are the initial magnetic susceptibility and saturation magnetization. The results prove the applicability of this method in detecting roadside pollution. The shape and magnitude of the magnetic signals was affected by the topography and prevailing wind direction that caused the magnetic peaks to be shifted accordingly. Particle size was found to affect the magnetic material content, where sand size (63-150 μm) bears the highest magnetic signals relative to smaller silt size (<63 μm). The magnetic anomalies coincided positively with heavy metal pollution in the studied site, which might indicate that the magnetic materials serve as an effective proxy for the metallic pollution (i.e., Fe, Ni, Pb, Cu, and Zn) originated mainly from vehicular sources. © 2007 Springer-Verlag.