Modeling and evaluating spatial variation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in urban lake surface sediments in Shanghai

To explore the influence of rapid urbanization development on the accumulation of 16 priority PAHs in urban environment, thirty-three surface sediments from city lakes in different urbanized areas of Shanghai were collected to evaluate the occurrence characteristic and source apportionment of PAHs. The concentrations of Σ₁₆PAHs in lake surface sediments ranged from 55.7 to 4928 ng g⁻¹ with a mean value of 1131 ng g⁻¹ (standard deviation, 1228 ng g⁻¹), of which 4-, 5- and 6-ring PAHs were the dominant components. Spatial distribution of PAHs in lake surface sediments showed a significantly declining trend along with a decreasing urbanization gradient (one-way ANOVA, p < .05). Two hotspots of sediment PAHs were mainly distributed at highly urbanized areas with intensive population density and heavy traffic activities and at burgeoning industrial towns in the suburb. Source apportionment of total PAHs identified by a constrained positive matrix factorization model revealed that vehicle emission and combustion of coal, biomass and natural gas were the absolutely predominant sources, respectively accounting for 55.0% and 40.45% of total PAHs burden in lake sediments. Land use regression (LUR) models were successfully developed to evaluate spatial variation of PAHs contamination in urban sediments based on their significant correlations with residential land, commercial land, traffic variables, industrial sources, and population density. All PAH compounds showed strong associations with one or two source indicators (the traffic congestion index and the number of industrial sources), with the fitting R² varying from 0.529 to 0.984. Our findings suggest that energy consumption related to land use activities obviously promoted PAH accumulations in urban sediment environment during rapid development of urbanization and industrialization in Shanghai.