Effects of municipal wastewater on physical and chemical properties of saline soil

Abstract

A study was carried out to investigate the effects of municipal wastewater treatments on physical and chemical properties of saline soil. Recently, the amounts of wastewater are sharply increasing and the kinds of pollutants are also varied as the world wide industry is being developed incessantly. Soil samplings of 0-20 cm depth were from Segzi plain in Isfahan province (the center of Iran). The experiment was carried out at green house. The experiment consisted of 4 treatments including soil without irrigated (T1), soil irrigated with 100 ml of wastewater (T2), 200 ml of wastewater (T3) and 300ml of wastewater (T4) for everyday were taken as experimental unit. Soil reaction (pH), electrical conductivity (EC), organic matter (OM), total nitrogen (TN), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), sodium ions (Na), chloride ions (Cl), extractable iron (Fe), cadmium (Cd), zinc (Zn) and bulk density (BD) were determined. Soil irrigated with wastewater caused increase of EC, P, OM, TN, K, Na, Cl, Fe, Cd and Zn but it caused a decrease of soil pH. This result showed that soil irrigated with wastewater caused a decreased of BD.