This dataset contains detailed maps of heavy metals in the EU27 (EU-28 except Croatia), as documented in the article "Maps of heavy metals in the soils of the European Union and proposed priority areas for detailed assessment" by Gergely Tóth, Tamás Hermann, Gábor Szatmári and László Pásztor, in Science of The Total Environment, Volume 565, 15 September 2016, Pages 1054-1062.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310452#!
Maps for As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Pb, Mn, Sb, Co and Ni concentrations in European topsoil.
Important note: the mentioned paper refers in some point to a "Zn" map; this is an error and should be read as "Mn".
For each of these maps: also a map of prediction error variance, as described in the article.
Format: TIFF
Resolution: 1km
Spatial reference: ETRS89_LAEA_Europe
Geographical cover: EU27 (EU-28 except Croatia)
The unit of measurement: mg/kg for As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Pb, Mn, Sb. Co and Ni, with detection limits 2.84, 0.07, 0.32, 0.26, 0.00005, 1.16, 2.12, 0.81, 0.15 and 0.27 mg/kg respectively.
Note that the original LUCAS HM point data are not available to the public, while the general topsoil point properties can be retrieved from:
https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/lucas-2009-topsoil-data
Important updates
For the Copper map (Cu), we recommend to download also the 'Copper distribution in topsoils in the European Union' which could be considered to be a more complete dataset and which was published recently (2018).
For the Mercury map (Hg), we recommend to download also the 'Mercury content in the European Union topsoil' which could be considered to be a more complete dataset and which was published recently (2021).