Concentration of Heavy Metals in Natural Soils of Jeju Island

For 63 soil series distributed in Jeju Island, natural uncultivated soils in each soil series were collected, and their physicochemical properties and their concentrations of 19 heavy metals including 8 heavy metals which are regulated by Korean Soil Environment Conservation Law, were analyzed. Moreover, the correlations between physicochemical properties and heavy metal concentrations, and between heavy metal concentrations were analyzed. The heavy metals distributed in the higher concentrations and the lower concentrations with arithmetric mean value, were Mn(730 mg/kg) and Ba(493 mg/kg), and Hg(0.146 mg/kg) and Tl(0.096 mg/kg), respectively. The correlations between pH(H2O) and heavy metals(Hg, Ni, Co, Se), between pH(NaF) and heavy metals(Hg, Ba, Se, Tl), and between organic matter content and heavy metals(Hg, Tl) were significant at the 0.01 level. From the correlations between heavy metal concentrations, there were 22 where there were significant at the 0.01 level and they showed positive correlation. Among those, the heavy metals showing the correlation higher than r=0.5, were Sb-V(0.878), Mo-Sn(0.867), Co-V(0.654), Co-Sb(0.648), Be-Sn(0.546), and Sn-Tl(0.528).