Content and Distribution of Black Carbon in Surface Soil of the Urban Area of Wuhu

In order to investigate effects of human activities in the process of urbanization on accumulation of black carbon in the soil, a total of 154 soil samples were collected from the surface soil of the urban area of Wuhu, including five different function zones, for analysis of contents of organic carbon (OC) and black carbon (BC). Results show that the content of black carbon in the soil of Wuhu varied in the range of 0.02-26.16 g·kg^-1, being 5.87 g·kg^-1 on average and 62.98% in variation coefficient. The five function zones followed a decreasing order of Jinghu >Jiujiang >Sanshan >Yijiang >the development zone in terms of mean BC content. About 50% of the samples were found to have black carbon >5-10 g·kg^-1 in content. The BC/OC ratio in the urban soil varied in the range of 0.01-0.88, being 0.58 on average, which indicates that the BC in the soil of Wuhu City originates mainly from combustion of fossil fuel. BC content varied sharply with function zone in spatial distribution, which is held to be closely related to human activities in the city of Wuhu.