Integrated approach to determine background concentrations of chemical elements in soils

Analysis and calculation techniques of geochemical background concentrations of chemical elements in various systems is of paramount importance for applied geochemistry. Herein we assume the geochemical background as the average of natural variations in the concentrations of chemical elements determined at a territory that highly probable does not host any natural and/or anthropogenic sources of contaminating chemical elements. In the context of determining geochemical background, our research was focused on determining the concentrations of heavy metals in soils in the city of Yerevan with the application of an integrated approach. Comparison of the obtained background values with the mean concentrations of elements in the upper continental crust yields representative data, and the application of various statistical tests (±3σ, ±2σ, and boxplots) is proved to equally efficient.