Assessment of Urban Soils

Abstract

Contaminated urban soils can be assessed in different ways. This chapter introduces the most important approaches applied. Firstly, urban soils are classified based on the World Reference Base (WRB) and specified with reference to several international proposals. Secondly, it introduces the functional assessment of urban soils, taking particularly the functions habitat for plants, component of the water cycle as well as filter and buffer medium for metals into consideration. Solutions to quantify the functional estimation are presented. The assessment of contaminated urban soils is commonly focused on pathways endangering human health and other biota. Accordingly, all relevant pathways such as soil-human, soil-plant-human and soil-groundwater-human are described with reference to standardized exposure scenarios. Moreover, quality standards for contaminated land of a number of countries in different continents are listed, compared and discussed.