Özet:

Natural soils have been polluted by variety of human activity such as urbanization, industrialization and excessive fertilizer and pesticide usage. However, the agricultural soils alongside the highways, especially those of international ones, are relatively at higher risk of heavy metal pollution depending on the intensive track traffic. Therefore, total of 72 soil samples from the 24 sampling sites were taken at 5 km interval to elucidate the vehicle-induced heavy metal pollution on the international highway 080 in Igdir, Turkey. After characterising the soil samples, their total and DTPA extractable or plant available concentrations were determined. The results showed that the concentrations of total and available heavy metals were highly dependent on the distances from the highway. In general, the closer distance to highway resulted in higher element concentrations. Iron and zinc were the most affected elements (p>0.01), and followed by nickel (p<0.05), and manganese and copper (close to p= 0.05). The zone from 0 to 10 m away from the highway was the most polluted area. Pollution indices (PI) were in descending order as Ni>Cu>Zn>Fe>Mn for the total concentrations and Cu>Zn>Mn>Fe>Ni for the available fractions. The pollution load indices (PLI) were generally higher than the pollution indices (PI) of total micronutrients except nickel (Ni) values, and were generally lower than the pollution indices (PI) of available ones. It can be concluded that Ni and Cu were likely to reach environmentally risky levels in relatively shorter time.

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