title: Impacts of human activity modes and climate on heavy metal "spread" in groundwater are biased.
abstract: Groundwater quality deterioration has attracted world-wide concerns due to its importance for human water supply. Although more and more studies have shown that human activities and climate are changing the groundwater status, an investigation on how different groundwater heavy metals respond to human activity modes (e.g. mining, waste disposal, agriculture, sewage effluent and complex activity) in a varying climate has been lacking. Here, for each of six heavy metals (i.e. Fe, Zn, Mn, Pb, Cd and Cu) in groundwater, we use >330 data points together with mixed-effect models to indicate that (i) human activity modes significantly influence the Cu and Mn but not Zn, Fe, Pb and Cd levels, and (ii) annual mean temperature (AMT) only significantly influences Cu and Pb levels, while annual precipitation (AP) only significantly affects Fe, Cu and Mn levels. Given these differences, we suggest that the impacts of human activity modes and climate on heavy metal "spread" in groundwater are biased.
authors.affiliation: College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China; Key Laboratory of Environmental Biology and Pollution Control (Hunan University), Ministry of Education, Changsha 410082, China; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore. Electronic address: xsqin@ntu.edu.sg.
authors.forename: Xiaosheng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.affiliation: College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China; Key Laboratory of Environmental Biology and Pollution Control (Hunan University), Ministry of Education, Changsha 410082, China.
authors.forename: Guangming
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore; Department of River, Yangtze River Scientific Research Institute, Wuhan 430010, China.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D002980:Climate; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D060587:Groundwater / Q000032:analysis*; D006802:Human Activities; D019216:Metals, Heavy / Q000032:analysis*; D008906:Mining; D012037:Refuse Disposal; D012722:Sewage; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis*; D014887:Weather
chemical_list: D019216:Metals, Heavy; D012722:Sewage; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical
keywords: Climate change; Groundwater; Heavy metal; Human activity; Pollution; Water quality