The methods for determining the indicative factors of heavy metal cumulative effect in soil: Grey correlation analysis and mathematical statistics methods

The indicative factors of heavy metal cumulative effect in soil environment are important for preventing soil from contamination and its remediation. At present, the common methods for the factors selecting are mainly based on the soil background value,nevertheless, there are two extreme cases where the soil background value is lacking or inadequate, and hence the common methods cannot be used. In view of these two cases, this paper presents two new methods by using descriptive statistics and grey relational analysis respectively. A comparative study of the realities of situation shows that both methods are feasible.