Monitoring of Soil Pollution in Agricultural Lands Using Magnetic Susceptibility and Mineralogy Analyses, North Al-Muthanna Province, Iraq

Abstract

One hundred and fifty samples of soils were collected from five different agricultural lands in Al Muthanna province, southeast Iraq. This study aims to explore the magnetic mineralogy and its correlation with heavy metals in four agricultural lands in north of Al-Muthanna Province. These samples were analyzed using magnetic susceptibility and mineralogy analyses (magnetic susceptibility (χ), frequency-dependent susceptibility (κfd%), Anhysteretic remanent magnetization (χARM), S-ratio, saturation isothermal remanent magnetization (SIRM) and back field of isothermal remanent magnetization (IRM), grain size, and heavy metal analyses for soil assessment. The results show the dominance of magnetite and some portions of hematite as the main magnetic carriers in the surface soils. Super-paramagnetic (SP) and single domain (SD) grains are the two main magnetic grain sizes in the surface soils, based on cross plots of χ versus ARM and χ versus SIRM. The enhancement of magnetic susceptibility in the soil samples could be caused by pedogenic and anthropogenic processes. Heavy metal contents show no correlation with magnetic susceptibility for Rumaitha, Samawa, Warka’, while a positive correlation in Swair. This study demonstrates that magnetic mineralogy could be used as an indicator for different sources of soil contamination.