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Urban Vegetable Garden Soils and Lay Public Education on Soil Heavy Metal Exposure Mitigation

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Green Technologies and Infrastructure to Enhance Urban Ecosystem Services (SSC 2018)

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Abstract

Twenty-two urban community vegetable gardens in New York State were selected to find out the relative accuracy of the application of a lay-person protocol in estimating soil properties useful towards demarcating potential heavy metal contamination hot spots. Results suggest that non-expert field pH tests and colour identification is sufficiently accurate relative to lab-based analyses. Colour determination aligned significantly with soil organic matter estimates based on known correlations, although the field procedure may necessitate more initial training and supervision of lay persons. The lay-person protocol formulated for this study could be useful in enabling urban gardeners to identify and avoid garden areas with higher potentials for heaviest metal phytoavailability and contamination risk.

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Acknowledgments

This project was made possible by a grant from the Sustainability Fund of The Research Foundation of the State University of New York.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, State University of New York at New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, USA

    Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro

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  1. Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro
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Correspondence to Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. RUDN University , Moscow, Russia

    Viacheslav Vasenev

  2. RUDN University , Moscow, Russia

    Elvira Dovletyarova

  3. City University of New York , Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Zhongqi Cheng

  4. DIBAF, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy

    Riccardo Valentini

  5. National Research Council (CNR), Institute of Research on Terrestrial Ecosystems (IRET), Porano, Terni, Italy

    Carlo Calfapietra

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Engel-Di Mauro, S. (2020). Urban Vegetable Garden Soils and Lay Public Education on Soil Heavy Metal Exposure Mitigation. In: Vasenev, V., Dovletyarova, E., Cheng, Z., Valentini, R., Calfapietra, C. (eds) Green Technologies and Infrastructure to Enhance Urban Ecosystem Services. SSC 2018. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16091-3_24

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