Kimberly Mariel Recla Sept.

2, 2019
BS in Geodetic Engineering Instructor: Geol. Vanessa Amor Israel

“Assessment of Soil Fluorine Spatial Distribution around Brick Kilns Using GIS
Application”

I honestly haven’t known much of the functions of the Geographic Information System and
the readily laid out applications created with it that I am able to encounter in the regular basis.
However, some of its basic tools and functions were introduced to us in our previous subjects
including that of ArcGIS.

Fluorine, the 13th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, is said to typically settle within
the soil and readily combine with it, as well as to rocks, coal and clay. Soil fluorine is
naturally occurring micronutrient and considered a vital element to the health of humans and
animals. Due to increasing demand of rapid growth rate of population and urbanization
evident in many countries, construction and operation of Brick kilns which have known to
have great contribution to greenhouse gases and Fluorine emission, have also increased. And,
higher concentration of soil fluorine eventually leads to water pollution and may leave
damages to plants which definitely lead to the birth of this research.

This particular study aims to identify soil fluorine pollution by investigating the spatial
distribution of soil fluorine around brick kilns through a geostatistical approach of ArcGIS
10.2. In this research, GIS tool was used in order to obtain spatial interpolation maps by
applying on data set in mapping pollutant area and the corresponding possible sources by the
technique of inverse distance weighted (IDW) method. The researchers conducted their
assessment of soil fluorine spatial distribution in the four directions (North, Souh, East and
West) of Photohar region of Pakistan, covered with “Photohar clay”, a substance used for
brick making, wherein they had performed physiochemical analysis. After the researchers
determined the concentration of fluorine from the soil samples that they randomly extracted,
they analyzed the spatial distribution of fluorine present in soil of study area by using ArcGIS
10.2 software. Maps generated by IDW revealed that fluorine has different geographical
distribution. Most high concentration of fluorine visually depicted in east and low in west.
Turns out that Interpolation method (IDW) in ArcGIS is an accurate tool use to depict
distribution pattern based on assumption that each point has local influence that decreases
with the distance.

It is a direct inference that the region farthest to the kilns must have the lowest concentration
of fluorine. The researchers were able to justify that inference and present a spatial
autocorrelation analysis based on a geostatistical application, ArcGIS, that revealed areas of
high and low concentration of fluorine. IDW interpolation has helped prove the assumption
that soil fluorine pollution is closely related to brick kiln (pollution source) and its
concentration decreases with increasing distance. In this research, there were two highlighted
hotspots for fluoride pollution that may be of great help to the improvement of management
of kilns of Pakistan.