engleski

Urban gardening: Managing soil quality and preventing contamination risks

Municipalities throughout Croatia are turning to urban agriculture and gardening as a reasonable option to increase their access to healthy, nutritious, and low-cost agri- products. Community gardens provide many benefits, including healthier lifestyles by increasing activity levels, providing fresh produce, growing community pride, and nurturing social interactions and cooperation among people. However, it is important to timely identify risks that the use of soil in the urban area can carry on. City of Zagreb has recognized the importance of urban gardening and since 2013 has started with the establishment of urban gardens, which are all involved in the current monitoring program. The main objectives of this study are: (i) to identify location of urban gardens considering land use history, proximity to roads and their frequency, proximity to industry and waste landfills, and (2) to determine the effective depth of a soil, physico-chemical characteristics and trace element content of soil. The study includes 9 locations of urban gardens in Zagreb. Most of these gardens are formed on abandoned land located on the periphery and in newer neighborhoods. Only one garden is located on the land that has been used for agriculture for decades. Depending on the total area of the garden, topsoil samples (0-30 cm) were taken as 2 or 4 composited soil samples made up of 5 sub-samples. In this way, it is collected a total of 22 soil samples. Main soil physico- chemical characteristics (pH, CaCO3, OC, P2O5, K2O, nitrogen - nitrate (NO3-N) and nitrogen - ammonia (NH4-N)) were determined along with the element contents (Cd, Cu, Cr, Hg, K, Ni, P, Pb i Zn) after aqua regia extraction. A GIS geospatial database was compiled: the observation sites were spatially referenced using GPS and the resulting data were stored in different GIS layers. Furthermore, the resulting data were examined through uni- and multivariate statistical analyses. Although the largest concentration range, expressed as coefficient of variation, are observed for Cu (55, 4%), Hg (50, 9%), P (43, 9%) and Cr (41, 3%), the trace metal contents do not exceed threshold value established by the Croatian government regulation. Moreover, the results indicate that soil fertility varies considerably at the garden level, as well as at the parcel level within a garden. Such marked differences in soil fertility are due to a combination of inherent and agricultural practices.

gradski vrtovi; rizik od onečišćenja; kvaliteta tla; program praćenja

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