Modelling the balance of metals in the amended soil for the case of ‘Atmosphere–Plant–Soil’ system

Abstract

Changing the concepts of economic development and introducing new amendments can hardly decrease the accumulation in the soil of such pollutants as metals, remain- ing there for a long time. The predictive models for describing the balance of metals in the soil, which are based on the ‘atmosphere–plant–soil’ system and reflect the complicated physical–chemical nature of the metals ’ migration, expressed by coefficients obtained in long-term observations in natural conditions, allow for evaluating long-term concentration of metals in the soil. The model BALANS evaluates self-purification of soil, taking into account the uptake of metals of aerogenic origin by the soil together with amendments, their physical–chemical migration and the type of microrelief determining its intensity as well as the absorbed biomass of plants and the removal of metals with crops. In this model, the half-period of metals’ washing out from the soil, found for the microrelief characteristic of low places, exceeds 200 years for Ni, Cr and Pb and makes 90 and 150 years for Zn and Cu, respectively.