Source Governance-Oriented Zoning for Heavy Metal Pollution in Farmland Soil: a Case Study of an Industrial Park in Mid-Western Shaanxi Province, China

Soil heavy metal pollution in farmland has raised widespread concern. Implementing zoning governance is critical for enhancing the efficiency of pollution prevention and control practices. Traditional zoning approaches focus more on the status of soil pollution rather than its sources, potentially resulting in subsequent governance measures being either irrelevant or only having short-term effects. Integrating information about heavy metal sources into zoning strategies is beneficial for effective pollution control. This study analyzed heavy metals in topsoil within a typical industrial park, identifying their primary sources through multivariate statistics and spatial pattern analysis. The contributions of these sources were then quantified using absolute principal component score-multiple linear regression (APCS-MLR), positive matrix factorization (PMF), and ensemble models. Based on the differences in source contributions, the study area was divided into different sub-regions by fuzzy clustering method (FCM), and appropriate management strategies were proposed for each. The results showed that cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), and nickel (Ni) were primarily derived from natural sources, with their contributions ranging from 82.82