Elemental composition of the topsoil fine fraction at and around the Tibetan plateau

The <20 μm fractions of crusted topsoils on and around the Tibetan Plateau (TP) were analyzed to take a broad view of the composition of major elements (MEs, Al, Fe, and Mn) and twelve trace elements (TEs, As, Ba, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Sr, U, V, and Zn) and provide a crustal reference for environmental quality evaluation. The concentrations of most elements were generally higher in the Yarlung Zangbo River watershed (YZRW) and Pamirs but lower in the central Tibetan Plateau (CTP), Qaidam Basin (QB), and Tarim Basin (TB) due to the natural geochemical process. The concentrations of most elements in the five regions were higher than those of the upper continental crust (UCC), which was mainly affected by two natural factors. One was that the wide distribution of shale, schist, and phyllite on the TP led to the high concentrations of As and Cr. The other was that the concentrations of most elements in the <20 μm fractions of crusted topsoils were affected by particle sorting. Cu, Cd, As, and Pb in a few sites of the YZRW were influenced by local traffic emissions, mining operations, and increasing fossil fuel combustion over the past three decades (i.e., the 1980s–2010s). Furthermore, the values of crust‒referenced enrichment factor (EFucc) of most TEs (except Ba and Sr) in different environmental media with a high proportion of fine particles, such as aerosols, snow and ice cores, and river and lake sediments were generally 1.2–24.2 times greater than the values of fine fraction (<20 μm)‒referenced enrichment factor (EF < 20 μm), suggesting that the degree of anthropogenic effects on the TP environment should be overestimated in previous assessments using the UCC as the reference.