Relationship between iron and trace metal fractionation in soils

Iron compounds significantly affect the behaviour of trace elements in soils. Sequential chemical extractions are widely used to estimate not only the solid phase speciation of chemical elements but to study their mobilisation conditions. In this paper, we present results about the effect of iron fractionation on that of trace metals (Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) in representative soils for Hungary. Our aim was to study the effect of pedogenic processes and soil parent material on trace metal association with soil iron phases. Two major soil groups, such as Luvisols and non-Luvisols could be established based on trace metal content, distribution and fractionation in the studied soils. Such differences were found to be primarily due to the differences in the pedogenic processes in the studied soils, whereas soil parent material has not affected these characteristics significantly. We found that Fe phases affect trace metal fractionation and mobilisation as their host in form of both inherited and pedogenic phases. However, pedogenic processes, primarily iron and organic matter accumulation in our case, generally overwrite the effect of inherited iron phases on trace metal accumulation, distribution and fractionation. Among the studied metals, fractionation of Co and Cr were found to be much more affected by that of Fe, followed by Cu, Zn and Ni, whereas Pb could be associated with iron phases only subordinately.