Riparian zones can act as an important sink for various contaminants, including heavy metals. The reten-tion and accumulation of heavy metals in riparian soils varies spatially and is related to many localfactors, such as soil properties, topography and land use. However, the relative importance of such fac-tors in determining the heavy metal contamination of riparian soils remains unclear. In this study, weinvestigated the concentrations of 10 heavy metals (i.e., Ba, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sr and Zn) andtheir relationships to environmental features in 67 soil samples collected from 26 riparian sites alongthe Han River, China. Our results showed that there were significant and positive correlations among theconcentrations of all heavy metals except for Ba, Mn and Sr. Heavy metal concentrations were, in general,positively associated with conductivity, fine substrate, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus contents in soilsbut were negatively related to soil pH and density. Among the topographic conditions studied, elevationand distance from the river mouth were positively associated with the concentrations of Ba, Cd, Cr and Niin riparian soils. Upland land use had a significant effect on the concentrations of Co, Cu and Zn. General-ized linear models revealed that soil properties, topography and land use together accounted for 11–69%of the variance in single metal concentrations, while redundancy analysis showed that such factors couldexplain 48% of the variance in overall metal levels. Our findings suggest that heavy metal concentrationsin riparian soils are regulated not only by soil properties but also by physical characteristics such astopography and land use.
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